Frank brought Stump home, and that helped a lot. She whined and whimpered, and I whined and whimpered and I thought I’d never been so glad to see anyone in my life. I told her that Thomas was going to prison, and if she wanted, she could attend his sentencing hearing and give a victim impact statement about the scars she would carry for the rest of her life. Obviously this wasn’t a promise I would be able to keep, but how was Stump going to find out? It seemed to make her happy.
Actually, being home made us both happy. I never thought I’d be so glad to see my old trailer house, but after the past several days it was like a mansion to me. A mansion on wheels.
Les or his wife had brought over groceries while I was gone, and Frank and I made thick peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and I poured two big glasses of milk. In the back of my mind was the possibility that Trisha and I really would go to Fat Fighters together, and I doubted PB&J would be on the menu after that, so I thought I should enjoy it while I could.
Frank left after two sandwiches and one grudgingly given Star Crunch, and I breathed a sigh of relief with Stump snuggled up on my lap.
I scratched her ears and thought about that terrifying ride toward what could have been a horrible death. In a strange delayed reaction, I grew a lot more afraid than I had been at the moment. My heart began to pound, and my breath came short. I went back over every second of that trip, my mind straying to what could have happened, what might have happened if Viv hadn’t reacted, if things hadn’t turned out the way they did.
“Please, God,” I whispered, lost in a horrified trance, clutching Stump until she squirmed and grunted in irritation.
I blinked and shook my head. Crazy. I was safe now. I was begging God for something I already had, a prayer he’d already answered.
This called, I realized, for a real prayer of gratitude, an honest-to-goodness, on-my-knees prayer. I lugged Stump and her box into the prayer room and lit the candles.
Stump curled up in the box and fell asleep while I quieted my mind and tried to pray. My mind was a whirl of everything that had happened, everything I’d been struggling with, and everything Les had told me. I started off thanking God for saving us, for protecting me from Sylvia and Rey and Thomas, for seeing that all of us made it through alive. But my mind kept hanging on what Les had told me.
“Is that it, God?” I finally asked. “Is Les right? Is the love there and I’m just not letting it in?”
I crawled over to the box I’d brought in and pawed through till I found the picture of me at five years old. You never did want anyone to love you, G-Ma had said. Stubbornest thing you ever saw.
“But that’s not true!” I said to the picture. “Of course, I wanted people to love me. What kid wants to keep people at arm’s length? What kid wants to distrust everyone they meet?”
I felt tears well for that poor little girl, who at five already knew too much about the ways people could hurt each other, could abuse trust and inflict pain. That little girl wanted love; she just didn’t trust it.
“God, I want you to love me, I really do. I want to believe it. I’m sorry if I’ve been blocking you out. I’m sorry if I’ve kept you at arm’s length. I never meant to, I swear it. It’s just hard for me to believe, I guess, because no one ever has. If you need a leap of faith, this is it. You say you believe me, so I believe it. As of right now, I believe it.”
I closed my eyes and swayed on my knees, willing myself to let my guard down, to open my heart and wait. I’d never felt so vulnerable. I felt a sliding away of a wall I hadn’t even known existed.
“FINALLY.”
I almost fell over backward. Then I thought, ‘Oh, what the heck,’ and I did fall over backward.
“Umm…God?” I thought, feeling like an idiot. Was that you?
He didn’t say anything else, though. He didn’t need to. What happened next kind of defied description, although thousands of people have tried to describe it. I felt awash, submerged, floating in love. I cried and rocked and blew my nose and laughed and cried some more. It was weird and goofy, and above all, it was real.
“What do you know?” I said in a wet, snuffly voice. “My heart is strangely warmed.”
Stump didn’t get it. She moaned and dragged herself over to the edge of the box so she should could lick my elbow, and I felt even more love. Love for her, from her, from God, for God, for everyone in this whole crazy world. My heart was so full I wanted to just lie there in the floor and soak in it.
I don’t know how long I lay there, but I have to say it was miles better than any binge I’d been on, any party I’d ever been to, better by light years than any experience I’d ever had. I lay there, feeling it. Finally feeling it.
So this was the love of God. No wonder Les got so excited about it.
Les. I crawled back up and rubbed my eyes on my shirtsleeve. I had to call him. What was I going to say?
I went to the bathroom and blew my nose. My cell phone rang and, of course, it was Les.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“That’s funny, because I was just about to call and tell you that you were right.”
“I was?”
“Yeah. Les, listen, I prayed and I believed and I…” I had to stop because the tears were back and I couldn’t get any words out. I cleared my throat. “Warm fuzzies!” I finally croaked.
“Oh, Salem,” he said tenderly. He shouldn’t have been so tender, because that sent me into fresh spasms.
He said a few other things but all I could do was sob and whimper and grunt occasionally. He told me to get some rest and he’d check back with me tomorrow. I hung up and cried again. I wondered vaguely if I should worry about dehydration, but it wasn’t as if I could stop it.
I set Stump’s box by the couch and lay down beside her, hanging my hand over the side so I could scratch her ears. She fell asleep and, after a while, so did I.
I woke up to knocking at the door. I’d been dreaming I rented a baseball stadium to tell everyone about how much God loved me. The place was packed. The more I tried to explain it, the more blank the stares seemed to get and the more enormous the silence became. And the more confused I became that I actually had something to brag about.
But when I woke up I remembered how I’d felt, and I thought, “Yeah. That happened.”
I checked the clock and seeing as how it was dinnertime, I figured it was Frank knocking to get another free meal. If I’d known Bobby was the one knocking I would have checked my hair before I opened the door.
He wore a yellow golf shirt and jeans, and his hair looked a little damp around the bottom, like he’d just gotten out of the shower. “How ya doing?” he asked.
“Not bad, considering,” I said. “Come on in.”
“I can’t stay, I was just in the area and I thought I’d check and see if you needed anything.”
“Nothing right now. Les has pretty well fixed me up.”
He stepped back onto the deck and I followed him. The sun was going down, yellow and purple streaks reaching far across the sky, black trees on the horizon. We stood silently at the rail and watched the darkness grow up from the ground, creep ever closer to us.
“So…you’ve had a busy week.” He turned toward me, one hip against the rail.
“I can’t claim I’ve been bored.”
He lifted his chin. “How about you give boring a try for a while?”
I laughed. “I’ll do my best, Bobby. I promise you that.”
“Good, because…” He trailed off, his eyes suddenly intense on my face in a way that stopped my breath in my throat. He lifted a hand toward my face, then settled it on the rail.
Because why, I wanted to ask. But I froze there under the strength of his gaze, wondering what he saw, wondering why he looked so intense, almost captivated. Wondering what he had to look so conflicted about.
“You look different,” he said finally.
“I feel different.” I shrugged. I felt again that swelling of my heart. It had made a differenc
e even Bobby could see.
“Peaceful. Happy. That’s how you look now.”
I felt myself smile, and thought he’d described it perfectly. “You’re very perceptive,” I said.
“Well, I’m glad everything worked out for Tony the way you wanted it to.”
I blinked, lost for a second, then realized he thought that was why I looked different. I opened my mouth to tell him what had really happened, then remembered the dream about the stadium full of underwhelmed spectators and got scared. Instead, I shrugged. “Yes, well…I told you he was innocent. It feels good to be proven right.”
“We would have found the truth, you know.”
“I know.”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually. We’re both big enough to admit that I just helped speed things up a little.”
He gave me that crooked grin that used to send my heart soaring. Funny, you’d think I’d outgrow that by now.
“Yes, we’re both big enough to admit that.” He tapped the deck railing a couple of times and shifted his feet. “You did a good job, Salem. You really did.”
I didn’t know what to say because all I’d really done was be nosy, but at least I’d accomplished something. “So, this is what it feels like to help people. No wonder you like being a cop so much.”
“Just leave it to us next time, okay?”
I saluted. “No problem. Tomorrow I go back to being the mild-mannered dog groomer by day, and the mild-mannered couch potato by night.”
“That’ll help me sleep better.” Again, he tapped the railing and took a step back. “If you don’t need anything, then, I guess I’ll just head out…”
I nodded. “I’m fine. Thomas is behind bars, the fridge is stocked, Stump’s on the mend. Life is good.”
“Good, then I’ll just –”
Suddenly he was back, right in front of me, and his hand was lifting my chin and his lips were on mine. I was so shocked that for a second I wondered if it was really happening, but oh, those lips were so real, firm and soft at the same time. It was a long kiss, still and captivating and wonderful. It didn’t even occur to me that maybe I ought to pull away, not until the moment he did.
He looked almost as shocked as I felt, but a little defiant, too. Like he couldn’t believe he’d done that but, by gum, he’d do it again if he wanted to. He took a step back, his hands in his pockets.
“Ummm…” I said. “Did you just kiss me?”
“There’s room for doubt? It must not have been much of a kiss.”
“No, no, it was a good kiss,” I assured him. “Spectacular. It’s just that I have a really good imagination, and believe me, I’ve spent a lot of hours imagining you kissing me. And you know, I probably still have some meds in my system, so I had to ask in case it was just one of those…” I shut up.
He bit the inside of his lip. “So how was the reality, in comparison?”
“Far better,” I said. Although we’d shared some pretty amazing fantasy kisses, too. But reality was better. “There’s just this one thing…” Now, what was it? My mind was telling me I really shouldn’t be kissing him because… “Oh yeah. I’m still married.”
He had the decency to look a little embarrassed. “Oh, I know. I didn’t mean anything by that, of course. I just –” He took a few steps back. “I knew you’d always wanted me to do that, so I thought I’d throw you one.” He grinned to show he was kidding. Then he tripped over the top step and almost busted his butt all the way down the steps.
If he hadn’t made that last crack I would have probably tried to hide my laughter, but I didn’t. “Klutz. Trisha is so right about you. Huge ego.”
He bowed and then saluted as he walked back to his car. “Take care of yourself, Salem. I hope next time I see you it’s at the grocery store or something boring like that.”
“I told you I’d try. That’s the best I can do.” I watched him drive away, then stood on the front deck for a long time, watching the stars come out and feeling the kiss of Bobby Sloan on my lips.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kim Hunt Harris is the award-winning author of the Trailer Park Princess comic mystery series.
Kim knew she wanted to be a writer before she even knew how to write. When her parents read bedtime stories to her, she knew she wanted to be a part of the story world. She started out writing children’s stories, and her stories grew as she did. She discovered a gift for humor and a love for making people laugh with her tales, and the Trailer Park Princess series was born.
Kim loves to not only make her readers laugh and entertain them with a good mystery, but also to examine the issues the everyday people face…well, every day. Issues like faith, forgiveness, perseverance, and tolerance. Set in Lubbock, Texas, the fun books feature a cast of quirky characters, outrageous situations, a drama queen of a dog, and from time to time, a tear or two.
Kim lives with her husband of more than thirty years and two teenage kids in Lubbock, TX.
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An Excerpt From
Unsightly Bulges
A Trailer Park Princess Cozy Mystery
Book Two
My friend and mentor, Les, is fond of telling me that I have to be careful what I pray for. “God just might give it to you,” he says. Always with one eyebrow raised, like who knew what horrific pandemonium would inevitably ensue if God gave me exactly what I requested for a change. His ways were above my ways and all that.
But I didn’t think even a God who works in mysterious ways would send a dead body to fulfill my request that he help me stick to my diet.
Excuse me. Strat-EAT-Gic Plan. In Fat Fighters, we were fined two units every time we said the “D” word. See, I had prayed for help not half an hour earlier, asking God to give me strength, willpower, discipline, a wired-shut jaw, anything to help me lose weight. Then I had driven straight to Sonic. It had been that kind of day. I knew I wasn’t supposed to turn to food to relieve stress, but since I could no longer turn to alcohol, drugs, or wildly promiscuous behavior, that left either violence or fried foods. So, you can see how a double meat, double cheese burger with extra mayo and jumbo fries was actually a fairly sensible option.
I scrubbed my face with my hands and tried to convince myself that I deserved to be sitting there (at Sonic, America’s Drive-In, where roller-skating carhops will bring your 237 grams of fat directly to your car window! You don’t even have to get out from behind the wheel! I had no reason to feel guilty. I’d been pretty good, considering…well, considering how bad I usually was. I’d lost four pounds in the five weeks since my high school buddy Trisha and I had joined Fat Fighters.
Yes, I’d hoped to lose twenty. Or thirty. But four was nothing to sneeze at. My pants were still too tight, but at least I could sit down without feeling like I was going to sever an internal organ. This trip to Sonic was my first real binge. Then again, this was the first time a) my little dog Stump had coughed up something bizarrely shaped and of unidentifiable origin on my kitchen floor, b) I’d been bitten by a saber-toothed Pomeranian at work, and c) I had looming date with the husband. (That last didn’t sound like a big deal for most people, but…well, I wasn’t most people. Until the last few months, I thought Tony and I were divorced. Turns out, not so much.)
I sighed and leaned my head back against the seat, wishing the carhop would hurry up with my food. If I had too much time to think, I
would freak out about the weekend with Tony, what I was going to wear, what I was going to say. Would he try to kiss me, for heaven’s sake? If he did, how would I react? What was the protocol here? I mean, he was my husband.
I also reflected on the unfairness of a world that had no sympathy when you say you’ve been bitten by a Pomeranian. Those suckers might be small, but their teeth were like rattlesnake fangs.
And Stump. Good Lord. What could she eat that would look like that when it came back up?
I heard a rumble and looked up to see the garbage truck in the alley behind Sonic. I watched idly, my mind whirling as the metal dumpster rose into the air and spewed its contents into the truck, much as Stump had done just that morning on the kitchen linoleum. Crushed cardboard boxes, black trash bags, various papers and cups. Dead body.
I actually sat there for a few seconds, still worried about Stump, before it dawned on me that the dumpster behind Sonic is not our normal way of disposing of dead bodies. What my reaction lacked in timing, it made up for with intensity.
“Hey!” I shouted. Because that always helps.
Unfortunately, the carhop had just skated up to my window with my order, and she thought I was yelling at her. She jerked back, and my french fries went flying.
“Sorry!” I yelled. Because I was in yelling mode now. “Dead body! In the dumpster!”
She was too busy backing away, wide-eyed, to see the bigger picture.
The truck dropped the dumpster back down with a hollow thump and trundled on down the alley.
I cranked the engine over and swung out of the space. I should have looked back; I almost ran down another carhop behind me, but luckily, she was pretty quick with a dive. I steered with one hand and dug through my purse for my phone with the other. I bounced the car out of the parking lot and spun around into the alley at the same time my hand closed around my phone. I charged my rusty little bucket down the rutted dirt alley while I punched in 9-1-1.
The Middle Finger of Fate (A Trailer Park Princess Cozy Mystery Book 1) Page 32
