Page 5 of Justice & Liberty

Unfortunately, things did not look better in the light of day. If anything, they looked worse.

I shrugged at Estelle. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Plus Bee and my stuff are there. I can’t take her to a kennel, and apparently Tanya will lock her in the closet if I leave them alone together. She even said she doesn’t want Bee in the apartment at all anymore. I only left her there this morning because I know Tanya will be at work all day.”

Estelle’s lips pursed. I worried that she was going to march me right back to the apartment at the end of the workday, so she could beat Tanya around the head and shoulders with her giant purse. While I couldn’t let her do it—I didn’t want her to get arrested for assault—it did paint a tempting picture.

Bee would certainly approve.

“So what are you gonna do?” she finally asked.

It was mid-morning and the store was empty, so I was sitting on the counter and she was standing behind it, chatting while she steamed clothes. It was pointless busy work, assigned because the company didn’t want to pay us to stand around when there were no customers.

Me, I was technically still on bereavement leave, but I didn’t have a ton of friends in town that I could go talk to, so the shop and Estelle it had been, even though I was off the clock.

I shook my head and gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of choices. I was looking online for a roommate, but that doesn’t seem promising. The best offer I saw in the paper was a poly couple looking for a third. I might be awesome, but I’ve never been much of a unicorn.”

Estelle quirked an eyebrow at me, but didn’t take the bait. “You’re not the kind of girl who does well with roommates anyway. You need your own space.”

“I can’t afford my own space. Not in this town.”

She nodded in agreement. Her family owned a house because her parents had bought it back when real estate in the valley wasn’t as prohibitively expensive. It was why her adult sons still lived at home in their twenties.

For a long time, she worked in silence, thinking. She reminded me so much of Mom sometimes, all quiet and thoughtful. When she looked back over at me, her expression was pensive. “Your mama owned a house, didn’t she?”

I flinched. “I’m so not ready to sell Mom’s house. Or the shop. Even if I were, I wouldn’t know where to start. What about all her stuff?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said, setting her steamer down and coming over to stand next to where I sat, feet dangling. “You’re the first competent employee I’vefound who’ll work for the peanuts this company offers. You know I don’t want to lose you, but this job isn’t good enough for you.”

That was a conversation she and I had often. She would reassure me that I was great, but point out that my philosophy degree was going to waste when a well-trained monkey could do my job. It was true enough, and a job selling clothes wasn’t what I’d envisioned during my years in college. I’d been planning to go to law school, after all.

This time felt different than her usual reminder that I was overqualified. Was she really suggesting?—

“You’ve got a home and a business there, all paid. No high rent, no cheating loser, and a whole new chance at everything. Not many people get that dropped in their laps.”

I wanted to deny it, but she was right. It was the height of privileged arrogance that I hadn’t even thought about moving into Mom’s house and running her shop. Both were completely paid off; the only expenses were utilities and taxes, and the shop had always covered all that for Mom.

“I left Iowa for a reason,” I pointed out, but my voice was as weak as the excuse.

Estelle snorted. “A lot of reasons, I expect, and that whole state seems determined to make even more of them these days. But you’re a grown woman now, not a kid. Whatever prom queen bullied you in high school probably has four kids and a husband with a beer gut by now.”

“It wasn’t like that. I mean, yeah, as a state they’re doing pretty bad, but they weren’t bigots in South Liberty. I was never harassed for being gay. Besides, my high school wasn’t even big enough to have a prom. It’s just—it’s a really small town. And I was kind of a jerk as a teenager.”

I’d spent high school rebelling, and since Mom hadn’t given me rules, my rebellion had been aimless. I’d dyed my hair purple and she’d told me it suited my green eyes. I’dbought a leather jacket at a secondhand store and she’d reminisced about the one she’d once had, and followed up by suggesting I should learn to ride a motorcycle. I’d drawn the line when she tried to tell me where in town to buy pot.

It was embarrassing when your mother was more of a rebel than you.

As easygoing as Mom had been, some of the town had given me the disapproval I’d been seeking. I’d let my hair go back to its natural auburn before I’d left for college, but old Ed who ran the gas station had still called me “the girl with the purple hair” when I’d stopped to gas up Mom’s car on the way to her funeral. It had been over ten years, for fuck’s sake.

Lucy Beasley had still watched me like a hawk when I’d gone into her general store for a soda, like she thought a grown woman with a steady job was going to pocket a pack of gum.

Estelle was still leaning against the counter watching me, disbelief clear in her eyes, and lips quirked down in disapproval. “All teenagers are jerks. You really think a town is going to hold a little childish nonsense against you? Especially after what you’ve been through? Or is this about pride? Let me guess, you vowed you’d never step foot back in Iowa.”

“No, nothing like that.” I waved her off, leaning back and staring up at the shop’s stained drop ceiling. “I spent most of college planning to move back. The University of Iowa is less than an hour from home, and I always thought I’d end up there, one way or another. But then I met Tanya, and...plans changed.”

She turned up her nose at that. “So she’s set you back in those plans a few years. You can do what you were going to do before, now that you know she’s not worth it.”

I had initially planned to apply to Iowa’s College of Law, but that dream didn’t hold much interest anymore. I couldcontinue the degree I’d gotten, but I’d seen what the job market held for philosophers, and a PhD in philosophy was mostly going to qualify me for teaching positions. I didn’t know if I had the patience to be a teacher, and if not, that would be wasted years and money.

It irked me, but Tanya hadn’t been...wrong, exactly. I’d spent my whole life drifting.

---