Page 15 of Melbourne
“You hurt her or Justine, I’ll kill you.”Dad nodded, and she could see the tears again.Then he told her mate that he would allow him to kill him if he did.“Just so we’re clear on that, then I can go away now.If you’re still looking for a job, I have one for you.It’s not a shit job, but it’s not the greatest either.I will pay you a good wage and expect a good work effort from you.If you’d like to take me up on that, just call my office.If you don’t have the means to call, then stop by.It’s the building on Main Street called Welsh, Inc.”
“Are you giving me this job because you want to keep an eye on me?If so, thank you.I want to be a better man and father than I was, and having a job will help me with that.”Melbourne nodded and said he was going to keep an eye on him.“I’ll do what it takes to get myself up and on my feet.I don’t have anything but the clothing on my back, but they’re clean and so am I.”
“I’ll speak to you when you come by.”Then he left them there.Going to where his brothers were, Melbourne winked at her before leaving the area and going back to work.She looked at her dad and wondered what he saw when he saw the big man.A threat or a nice person because as surely as she was sitting here, she knew him to be both.
“He’s a good man.”She said she was just thinking about that.“He loves you, too.You can see it in the way that he looks at you when he thinks that no one is watching.”
“I’ve never been loved before.I think I could get used to it.”Dad laughed, like he’d forgotten that he could do something like that, and it made her laugh all the harder for it.“You should laugh more often.Then it won’t startle you so much when you do.It’s a nice sound too.I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh before.”
“I had no reason to laugh before, but today is a beautiful day and I’m having lunch with my equally beautiful daughter.Life has suddenly taken a good turn, and I’m not even going to wait for the other shoe to drop.This is the best day of my life.”He laughed a bit more before he looked at her with a huge grin on his face.“Thank you for today.If I never get to have another lunch with you, then I will treasure this time for all of eternity.You’re a beautiful woman with a big heart, and I can’t thank you enough for sharing it with me today.But I’ve taken up enough of your time for one day, and I need to get this to your mother.Would you like to have lunch with her sometime?I can tell her when you’re not busy.”
“I’d like that.”Really, if she were honest with herself, which she rarely wasn’t, she didn’t want to have lunch with her mother.From the little hints that her dad had given her, she wasn’t going to be as nice as he’d been today.She didn’t know why she believed that, but she did.“The next time I see you, I’ll have a cell phone for you so that you can contact me when you want to meet again.”
“That would be lovely.I’ll take good care of it.I can use it for work too when Melbourne calls me for a job.I can’t wait to begin working.I feel lazy not having anything to do when I’m just wandering around.”She told him that she’d have it tomorrow so that he could contact her with the times he could have lunch, and she stood up to leave.“This really has been the best day of my life, Sammy.Thank you for talking with me and eating a meal with me.”
“You’re welcome.”She made her way to the restaurant and let herself inside.Standing with her back to the door, she stood there for several minutes just breathing in and out.She hoped that she wasn’t just played for a fool.She had enjoyed herself and wanted to do it again.Not tomorrow, but soon.For as much as she wanted to have a meal with her father again, she didn’t want to have one with her mother.
~*~
Belinda didn’t like that Allen had gotten a job before she’d been able to.She wanted to be first in that, but she supposed it was all right.One of them needed to work, and it might as well have been him.But the sub he’d brought her home kind of pissed her off.Why didn’t he insist that she be there with their daughter, too?She was trying to make amends, too, wasn’t she?
He had told her what they had talked about.And that her mate had threatened him.She was pissed off about that, but he seemed to think it was the right thing to do.She would have been all over the man for saying that he’d kill him, but Allen said that he would allow him to kill him if he were to hurt her.
“What if you accidentally hurt her somehow?Am I going to be left out in the cold without you around?That seems like a terrible threat that someone could give a person.”He told her that she knew what he meant but was being silly about it.“I’m not being silly about anything.You know how much I hate it when you call me that.I’m being serious right now.He could kill you, and I’d be all alone.Since I didn’t get to have a nice lunch with our daughter.”
“I told you it was just something that happened.She was coming down the sidewalk, and there was no time for me to hide.”She asked him why he’d have to hide if it were their daughter.“I didn’t want her to think that I’d been stalking her.And I wasn’t, not really.I was just seeing her around town for the last several days, and I enjoyed that.”
“So you have been stalking her.Maybe I would have been with you had you told me what you were doing.”He said that he’d not done anything, but she had invited him.“I wonder if she would have invited us both had we been together.”
“Why are you being like this?I told you that she wanted to have lunch with you sometime, didn’t I?”She said that it sounded last-minute to her.“How would you even know if it was last-minute or not.You weren’t there.”
“I know this.”Her lunch was ruined because they were fighting, and she told him that.Once she wrapped her sandwich back up and put it near her other things, she told him she needed to go out.“I might just run into her, too.Where did you say that she worked?”
“I don’t know.”She knew he was lying, but rather than get into a big fight with him again, she was just going to let him stew about her being mad at him.And she was too.They were partners in this, and he was getting out of line.It took her ten minutes of stomping around to realize that it was much too hot out for her to be out in the sunshine and that she didn’t even know what her daughter might look like.Either one of them, for that matter.“I just bet that he does.”
She started talking to herself when she was in prison.It was the best way to get someone to agree with her, and she liked it when people stayed away from her, thinking that she was off her noodle.It also afforded her someone to talk to in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep.People might think that she was insane, but she knew better.She just liked her own company.
Sitting on one of the pretty benches that were along the main street of the little town, she looked around.The place had changed a great deal since she’d been living around here.There were more shops than there had been before, and she liked to go into them to see what sort of pretties they had.Of course, she did take a few things when she was in the ones that seemed to cater to her needs, but not too much so that she’d end up in prison again.
She was almost sure that the woman who owned the shop had been keeping an eye out for her.Every time she went into the store, she followed her around like she was just waiting for her to take something.She wasn’t stupid enough to think that she’d be able to get off with a stern warning, but was careful that she didn’t get caught.Belinda never wanted to go into the system again.It had been too hard on her, and she’d never forgive her daughters for saying all those things about her when there had been a trial.But she was going to make nice for some things that she needed.A house for one thing.A pretty one with a picket fence in the front yard and a big porch that wrapped around the house so that she could spy on her neighbors.It was harmless, she thought, and something that she missed when she’d been locked up.
She also wanted some money.And to never have to eat from a dumpster again.It was worse than jail food, and she’d never thought that she’d say that.Stomping her foot, she thought of Allen again talking to Sammy without her around.He did it on purpose, she just knew it.
Belinda would have done things differently when she’d found her daughter.She would have demanded money…in a nice way.Then asked for someplace to sleep that wasn’t an empty buildingthat leaked when it rained and had cold water all the time, what she wouldn’t give for a nice hot bath with lots of bubbles.
While still sitting on the bench, she looked around at all the people who were walking around.Like they didn’t have a care in the world, she thought meanly to herself.Shaking her head at herself, she thought that if she had to go one more day with her husband talking about how they were changed people, she’d puke.She was changed, but it wouldn’t take her very long to be knocking the shit out of someone that pissed her off.
Being thinner helped her with her health, too.When she’d been overweight, she’d had trouble going up and down stairs in prison.But once she started having to take them to get around, she noticed that the pounds just shed away like it had been a hot day with a chocolate bar in her pocket.She pulled out the bar of candy that she’d swiped last night and decided it was the perfect time to get her fill of the sweet treat.She could never pull it out and eat it in front of Allen.
He’d have a fit about it and would tell her that she was going to end up back in prison if she were to keep it up.It was just one little candy bar, not like she was robbing the place of all its cash.For as much as she was tempted to do that, she knew that to be caught would take her right back to the place she’d only just been released from, and she didn’t want that.
His keeping her on a tight leash bothered her, too.He was forever telling her to behave herself in the event that she got caught.What were they going to do with an aging old woman who liked to get her thrills out of stealing from merchants that seemed to have too much anyway?Put her in jail?For a fifty-cent candy bar?A three-dollar tube of lotion.She pulled it out and used some of it on her hands.She’d never had such pretty-smelling stuff before that belonged only to her.
Belinda knew that she could get used to the finer things in life.She’d never had her nails done until she was in prison, and one of the other women would do them for a price.She loved having her hair washed by someone else, too, just to get all the tightness out of her head until she was nothing more than a limp noodle.There were plenty of things that she missed about prison, but the solitude.She couldn’t stand her own company for very long, and she knew it.All the talking to herself aside, if she had to be by herself for long periods of time, she’d lash out at someone and get herself into trouble again.It was the way it had been going on since she’d been a child.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but the sun was starting to go down.Getting up and making sure that she didn’t have any evidence of the chocolate or the lotion on her person, she made her way back to the building where they were staying.She did wonder why no one had run them off and thought that the security around here was very lax.Another reason why she didn’t think they’d bother with her stealing was that they had other important things to do before getting to her and her petty theft.She might even get herself some of the pretty bottles of lip gloss the next time she was in one of the little shops.
When she was where they were sleeping, Allen was gone again.Not that she really cared, but he’d been leaving her alone a great deal over the last several days.She was going to have to talk to him about it.When he got a job, she would need something to do, or she could go with him.Whatever the work that he was going to be doing was, surely they’d not care if she were to hang around for a bit now and then.
