After inspecting her new and improved snake-free lawn, she had finally succumbed to the pull of her couch and laid down on it. Sleep eluded her, but it wasn't that she was tired exactly, more like her body felt absolutely exhausted and used up, almost as though she was coming down with the flu. She really hoped she wasn't, though it would be better to get it here where no one would bother her rather than back in New Jersey where her sister would have been around to hover and hector her to take better care of herself. And used her illness as yet another reason why she should stay.

It wasn't like she hadn't thought about staying, maybe finding a job in a different part of New Jersey, or braving the wilds of Brooklyn where half her high school graduating cohort seemed to be settling down with husbands and wives and partners. But it was unsettling that it was her sister of all people who was urging her to stay, not just before but after their mother had finally succombed to the ravages of her stroke.

"But why?" she had asked Christie, honestly startled by the request. "You don't need my help anymore with mom."

They were standing before a row of urns in the funeral home, ostensibly there to pick one out for their mother's ashes at the funeral home director's urging, but they both knew that Christie would simply go with whatever was cheapest. They had already played out the same scenario after their dad had died.

"Jesus Christ Courtney," her sister exclaimed, tears welling in her eyes. "You really think I am that much of a bitch? That that's the only reason I wanted you to come back?"

She felt paralyzed before her sister's hurt and grief, and completely unmoored by it. Part of her wanted to point out that her sister had made it clear to her on the phone more than once that was exactly why she had wanted her to return to New Jersey. But she swallowed her words because she could see that right now her sister really did want her to stay. But she knew there was no way she could help her sister, just like she had been helpless before the grief of her fiance after losing the baby.

She groaned at the unwelcome thought of him and the accompanying memory of the last time she had seen him, but luckily further rumination was abruptly cut off by the ring of her doorbell.

Her eyes flew open.

"Cam?" she said out loud, before she could stop herself. She scrambled to a sitting position but didn't get up to answer the door. Who could it be on the other side? Would they go away if she didn't answer? Did she want them to go away?

When her visitor began poking her doorbell over and over again in annoyance she groaned. Melvin.

She put the chain on and cracked the door open. Her hideous landlord stood out front leering at her and scratching at his crotch. She shuddered.

"Yes?" she said, as neutrally as possible. He did have keys to her place after all.

"Your car's ready, I drove it over. I need a ride back to my office."

She cringed at the thought of Melvin in the car next to her. No way in hell.

"I can't," she said flatly.

"Why not?" he said, annoyed. "How am I supposed to get back?"

"I'm sick, I can't," she said, and then slammed the door shut.

She watched him through the peephole of her door, wondering if he would start jabbing at her doorbell again. For a second he looked as if he might, then reconsidered and turned away. She sighed in relief and fell back onto her couch, feeling nauseated all over again.

She heard the sound of a car engine starting and ran to the windows and peeked through the curtain just in time to see her landlord drive away with her newly repaired car.

"That bastard!" she cried out, and ran out to her front yard in a rage but not before Melvin had driven off. She flagged him a bird in helpless frustration and couldn't help but think how satisfying it would be to have a shotgun she could shoot toward the retreating vehicle, even if it was her own. She briefly wondered what people back home would think of such a thought, then shrugged. She was in Texas now, and at least she knew her sister would approve. Christie would probably take to Texas culture like a duck to water come to think of it. She could definitely envision her sister getting her nails done with Miss Terri and doing whiskey shots or something.

The smell of freshly mown grass brought her back to the present, and she realized she was standing out front of her house in the middle of the afternoon dressed in a t-shirt and her pink piggy boxer shorts cursing up a storm. Less than an hour back and already she was making a spectacle of herself. The neighborhood around her appeared deserted in the weekday afternoon heat, and the rattling hum of an air conditioning window unit somewhere nearby accentuated the eerie quiet. But she knew better than to assume that no one was watching her from the windows of one of these dismal cinder block bungalows that her neighbors holed up in. Someone was always watching you in this town. It had taken her almost a year to learn that lesson, but learned it she had.

Drops of sweat were now pouring down her face and she returned quickly to the dark coolness of her house, but this time she resisted the urge to fling herself back down on the living room couch. Instead she picked up her phone and considered it in the light that poured in from the kitchen windows. How was she going to return the rental car and then get to her car at Melvin's garage without asking someone for a ride? Someone who wasn't Melvin. She couldn't call a taxi since the only company in town was run by none other than Melvin, who of course did all the driving himself. She figured he had been cowed enough by Kyle and Cam and God knows who else to more or less behave himself, but the thought of sharing any kind of enclosed space him was out of the question.

She would rather walk.

She calculated the distance in her head between the rental car place on the outskirts of town and Melvin's garage. Five miles or so. Insanity in this heat. The last thing she needed was to pass out on the side of the highway or even worse start puking again. No, she had provided her neighbors with enough entertainment over the past year. That left three people who she could ask for help, and two of them were out of the question. She would definitely rather walk than ask them for anything.

That left Miss Terri. She really didn't want to ask for yet another favor from Madysen's mom, but she really didn't have a choice.

Miss Terri texted back immediately: "Sure honey see you there."

***

When an unfamiliar pickup truck pulled up outside the rental car office she ignored it at first, and continued to flick through the faded pages of a year-old issue of Beef Magazine she had taken up from the glass table in the small waiting room. Apparently cattle lice was a big problem these days, and she was just reading about how to recognize the symptoms when a light honk from the truck made her realize it was there for her.

She threw the magazine back down onto the table, grabbed her purse, and hurried out into the parking lot, already feeling guilty that she had kept Miss Terri waiting. Only when she opened the passenger door did she realize that it was not, after all, Miss Terri who she had kept waiting.

Kyle Walker sat at the wheel, smiling affably at her. The panic in her heart made her freeze in place.

"Hello there Courtney," he said, "Miss Terri sends her apologies, she had a last minute work emergency."

When she didn't make a move to climb up into the passenger seat he patted the seat and gave her a reassuring look.

"Come on now," he said, a coaxing lilt to his voice. She wondered if it was the same voice he used with errant livestock. "Hop on in and I'll get you home."

Suddenly she felt a surge of anger loosen up her voice. The last time she had seen him he had invited her to his home, seduced her, and then used the opportunity to warn her away from his son.

"No thanks," she said, and slammed the door shut. She felt the rage boiling inside her, as though the whole humiliating ordeal had gone down the day before instead of six weeks previously. And it didn't help matters that he still looked as handsome and rugged as ever, dressed in jeans and a navy blue cotton button down.

She returned to her battered folding chair in the waiting room and flipped back open to the cattle lice article. She fumed as she tried to read the same paragraph over and over again, trying not to care or notice what the truck in the parking lot would do next. Whether it would stay or leave. Because she really didn't care. Because she would rather call Melvin and get a ride home from him, or walk the five miles herself, maybe wait until it got dark and the temperature cooled off.

Because she would rather do anything than get into that truck with Kyle Walker.