Page 1 of Dirty
ONE
LIBERTY FIELDS
SERA
“Ma’am, I don’t give a fuck what your GPS is telling you to do. The road’s closed. We have power lines down all over the goddamn place and water up to our necks. Now turn around go back the way you came before I have your car towed.”
The man wearing the high visibility vest, leaning in through the window of my rental, looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. His name was Officer Grunstadt, and he’d eaten curry for dinner; I knew this because he’d been blasting me with his spicy breath while I’d been arguing with him about the state of the road up ahead for the last ten minutes. The twitch in his left eye was a recent display of his frustration. The rain had fogged up his glasses, and large, fat water droplets coursed down his face as he, once again, pointed back in the direction I’d just come from. “Liberty Fields is only thirty miles away. There are two motels there and a bed and breakfast, though I think the bed and breakfast was already fully booked the last I heard. You can figure out what you want to do tomorrow, once the storm’s died down.”
“I can’t go back to Liberty Fields. I have to get to Fairhope, Alabama, in two days, or I’m going to miss my sister’s wedding.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart. Catch a flight.”
“Every flight out of Rawlins and Laramie are cancelled until further notice. I need to keep driving, officer. You have to understand, I—”
“I do understand, miss. I understand perfectly well. You’re a pretty young millennial with a bad case of‘I always get my way.’You’re not used to be being told no, and you want me to break the rules. Unfortunately, I have a twenty-one year old daughter, and I’m used to all this…” He reaches out his hand, gesturing at my face, “…nonsense,” he finishes.
Asshole.Rude, small town punk asshole. “Firstly, sir, please do not gesticulate in my general direction like I’m a piece of trash you found at the side of the road. Secondly, I amnota millennial. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m a successful business owner. The reason why I’m successful is because I’ve worked my ass off, not because I’ve pouted, sulked, or convinced anyone to break rules for me. I know the storm’s bad, but the winds are calming down, and Waze does say the road is open and clear just another mile up ahead. You have no idea what stresses I’m dealing with, or the consequences I’ll have to face if I don’t make it to this wedding on time.So just let me through the damn blockade.”
Officer Grunstadt gave me a tight-lipped smile and pointed through my car, out the passenger window, to the other side of the road, where an overweight guy in a yellow plastic rain jacket was eating a sodden Subway foot-long. “See Jo over there? Jo gets four hundred dollars from the state to tow cars. That’s why he comes and stands out here on nights like tonight, come hell or high water. If I wave Jo over here, it’s gon’ cost ya an extra two-fifty on top of that four hundred to get your car outta his lot, and that’s after the twenty-four hour holding time is up. So, Miss…?”
“Lafferty,” I said, sighing heavily.
“So, Miss Lafferty. Is sitting here, arguing with me worth six hundred and fifty dollars to you? Or would you rather just turn back, get dry, get a good night’s sleep, and hope the fallen power lines have been dealt with by the time you wake up?”
God, this guy was a real piece of work. I forged a smile, digging my fingernails into the rental’s steering wheel, begging myself not to say anything that would get me into trouble. It had happened before. “You’re right, Officer Grunstadt. A night in a shitty motel does sound perfect right now. Thankssomuch for your assistance.”
The road back to Liberty Fields was narrow and winding, turning back on itself a hundred times before I even saw another car. The whole world seemed deserted. I’d tried to convince Grunstadt the wind was dying down a little, but the truth was it buffeted and rocked the car like crazy as I drove through the hammering rain; I had to focus to keep the thing from careening off the road and into the dark line of trees that bordered either side of the single-lane highway.
“Should never have left Seattle,” I grumbled to myself. “Should have just stayed home and watched Shark Tank, for fuck’s sake. Wyoming is the worst.”
My sister and I had always wanted to road trip across country. Sixsmith, my father, had forbidden us from doing it, which made sense. Sixsmith hadn’t wanted us driving off, because he’d known full well we’d never have come back. He would have had no one to torture and manipulate. He’d have had no one to cook his meals and clean his house. He’d have had no one to beat on when he came home drunk and bored.
So I’d waited. I’d waited until Amy was eighteen, a legal adult, before I’d packed up our bags, stole Sixsmith’s red Chevrolet Beretta, and got us both the fuck out of Montmorenci, South Carolina, for good. We’d worked in bars and as temps in offices, scraping enough money together to go to community college. Amy had studied languages, and I’d studied business management. Once we’d completed our degrees, unbelievably, Amy had moved out to South Carolina with her boyfriend, Ben, and I’d relocated to Seattle with dreams of creating my own consulting firm. It hadn’t been easy. There’d been many months when I couldn’t make rent, and many months when I’d thought about giving it all up, becoming a waitress, and living from pay check to pay check. I’d thought about that a lot, but I’d stayed the course. My persistence had finally paid off six years ago, when I’d landed a huge corporate account with a private lender. After that, I’d had more clients than I knew what to do with. I’d had to take on three new members of staff just to cover the workload.
My H.R. department—namely a perma-harrassed woman in her late forties called Sandra—had insisted I take time off to drive to Amy’s wedding. If only I could wrap my hands around Sandra’s neck right now, I’d throttle her. It would have taken six hours to fly to Alabama. Maybe a couple of hours in a car on top of that to reach Fairhope. But now, here I was, after three days on the road, stuck in the middle of the biggest flash flooding the state of Wyoming had ever witnessed, instead of being tucked up, comfortable and warm in a fancy hotel.
Goddamnit.
As I pulled up outside the Liberty Fields Guest House and Artisan Art Gallery, I mourned the fact that the place certainly didnotappear to be a fancy hotel. Fat lot of good my Hilton Rewards points were going to do me out here. The guesthouse looked like a derelict, abandoned farmhouse, perched on the side of the highway embankment as I pulled into the packed parking. My teeth rattled together as I traveled over a series of giant potholes, invisible in the near perfect darkness, and I swore colorfully under my breath. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be dealing with any of this. It didn’t seem to matter what I wanted, though. The car rocked from side to side as I slid my arms into my thick winter jacket, preparing myself to face the weather. Through the windshield, the trees on the other side of the parking lot were bowed, their branches waving like outstretched arms, reaching for help. God, it looked fucking miserable out there.
Opening the car door, I swung my legs out, and my feet disappeared up to my ankles in frigid, inky black water. “Ffffffff—” I stopped myself from swearing. This night just couldn’t get any better. Seriously.
There were so many cars parked haphazardly in the lot that I had to walk a solid hundred and fifty feet to reach the dimly lit entrance to the guesthouse. The rain seemed to come down harder as I half ran toward the building, my teeth grinding together. I had no idea rain could actually be this cold. Shit, I needed to get inside. I needed to get inside. The rust-flecked handle on the front door of the motel threatened to fall of in my hand as I yanked on it. A blast of heat hit me in the face as I hurried through the entranceway, and strains of Jonny Cash’s ‘I Walk The Line’ flooded my ears. The left hand side of the lobby wall was fitted out with a stand—the same kind of stand you’d find in any normal hotel, where local businesses and tourist attractions advertise themselves—but the slots on this stand were all notably, depressingly empty. Liberty Fields was a black hole in the center of the State of Wyoming, zip code: nowhere.
The motel lobby smelled like damp and mildew. A puddle the size of Lake Michigan had collected in front of the rickety looking front desk; it was impossible to avoid the vast body of water as I made my way to the counter to ring the brass bell. Not that it mattered, of course. My feet were already soaking wet, right along with the rest of me. I hit the top of the bell for service, and nothing happened. No sound. No cheerful, inviting,I-need-helpchime. Nothing.
“For fuck’s sake.” I looked around, searching for the night manager, but no one was to be seen. I leaned over the counter, hunting, hoping and praying for a savior to come along and tell me they had secret, exclusive retreat out back that I hadn’t noticed on my way in, but all I found were stacks of rotting newspapers, a metal dog bowl with food encrusted around its rim, and a mouse trap butted up against the wall. Very encouraging indeed.
On the other side of the lobby, I spied a public payphone. Pulling a handful of quarters out of my jeans pocket, I took advantage of the opportunity and I called Amy.
“God, Sera. It’s nearly two in the morning,” she groaned when she picked up.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just—fuck—I’m still stuck in the middle of nowhere. I have another twenty-four hours to drive, and it looks like tomorrow’s going to be a complete wash out. I don’t know if I’m going to make it.” In my experience, it was better to rip the Band-Aid off as quickly as possible, especially with Amy. She was hardly a no-nonsense woman, but if you strung things out with her, she tended to get a little hysterical.
“What do you mean, you don’t know if you’re going to make?” Her voice was a little groggy when she picked up a second ago, but now it was sharp with accusation and worry.
“There’s a huge storm, Amy. The roads are all closed. I’m stranded in Liberty Fields.”
