LITMIR.BIZ

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going to Ohio. A place called McIntosh.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      MCINTOSH WAS all Kaylee had imagined it would be. The gently sloping hills. The trees bursting with spring color. The open spaces. The crisp blue skies with the promise of summer in the warming air.

      Everything would have been perfect if only she had a job, child care and a place to live. Friends in town would have been nice. Family would have been better.

      If she hadn’t panicked when she’d gotten that letter from the Florida Parole Commission, she would have formulated a better plan.

      At eighteen, she’d thought it exciting to leave home for the unknown. But packing Joey and everything they owned into her car and heading for Ohio hadn’t felt like an adventure. It felt like a risk.

      She’d temporarily taken care of housing by getting a room at a hotel on the edge of town, but the most that could be said for it was that it was clean.

      Before they could look for a more permanent place to live, she had to find work. And she needed to do it with a six-year-old in tow because there was nobody she could ask to babysit.

      She pulled into a parking space on the appropriately named Main Street and got out of the car with Joey, feeling as though she’d been plopped down in the middle of a storybook.

      A recent rain had wiped everything clean, causing the spring hues to seem more vibrant. The street was awash with color, the white clouds puffy overhead in a cerulean sky. They walked up a slight hill past a beauty shop, a bookstore, a general store and a shoe-repair shop while she searched for an address.

      “Hey, Mom.” Joey pointed a forefinger at a tall tree that sported a profusion of tiny, red flowers against its smooth gray bark. “That tree looks like it has chicken pox.”

      “Yeah, sport,” she said. “It does.”

      The trees were almost always green in South Florida, the temperature forever warm, the traffic always busy. McIntosh was a welcome change. Thirty seconds could pass before a car went by, but the sidewalks, though not busy, were far from empty.

      “Look at that.” Joey sprang away from her, ran to the base of the tree and scooped up something. He came back to her side holding a very small squirming toad covered with warts. “Isn’t he cool?”

      She backed up a step. “You better put him down. He’ll give you warts.”

      “They said on TV that’s a mitt.”

      “A myth,” she corrected. “But even if he won’t give you warts, he looks like a baby. You better let him go so he can find his mother.”

      He rolled his eyes. “He was hatched from an egg.”

      Kids who watched nature shows on TV were tougher to manipulate, Kaylee thought. “Just let him go, Joey.”

      Joey groaned but turned away from her and scooted down. An elderly man who was passing by met Kaylee’s eye and greeted her, something else she wasn’t used to.

      She and Joey continued walking until she found the address for Sandusky’s, a small grocery store with a full-service butcher shop. The clerk at the hotel had told her that the store was looking for a cashier.

      “Now remember what we talked about, Joey.” She bent down to his level. “You need to be quiet while I’m talking to the people about a job.”

      Joey kept by her side while she found a clerk and asked to speak to the owner. He appeared from the back of the shop a few moments later wearing a white butcher’s apron that didn’t detract from his appeal.

      If she’d been twenty years older, she would have looked more than once. He had thick brown hair, pleasant features, kind hazel eyes and a nice smile. “I’m Art Sandusky. Can I help you?”

      “Hi,” she said brightly. “My name’s Kaylee Carter, and I’m here about the cashier’s job you advertised in the McIntosh Weekly.”

      A tremendous crash from the next aisle interrupted whatever he’d been about to say. His brows drew together. “I wonder what that was.”

      Kaylee looked wildly about for Joey, didn’t find him and had a pretty good guess. Together she and Art Sandusky rounded the corner of the next aisle. Her son stood beside broken pickle jars and a young girl in an apron. The smell of dill and vinegar was nearly overpowering.

      “What happened?” Art Sandusky asked.

      “The kid asked me if I wanted to see something cool. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a toad.” The girl shuddered. “It jumped on me.”

      “It didn’t mean nothing by it,” Joey said. The toad leaped into view and Joey scrambled away in pursuit.

      The job hunt didn’t go much better after that. Art Sandusky was a doll about the breakage, insisting it had been an accident and refusing to accept payment. But he’d also hired a cashier three days ago.

      Kaylee’s next stop was a deli-style restaurant that hadn’t advertised for help and turned out not to need any. The owner probably wouldn’t have hired her anyway after Joey bumped into a waiter carrying a tray of drinks. Two customers got drenched, but Joey came away dry as desert sand.

      “Do you know of anyplace else that might be looking?” she asked the tired-looking man who emerged from the kitchen to clean up the mess.

      “You might try Nunzio’s,” he said as he swished the mop back and forth. “It’s the only other restaurant in town with table service.”

      Kaylee’s palms grew damp and her heart sped up. Her impulse had been to make Nunzio’s her first stop, but she’d deliberately steered clear of the restaurant where Sofia Donatelli had once worked.

      Getting established before confronting Sofia had seemed like the smartest plan, but now she needed to be a realist. She couldn’t stay in McIntosh for long without a job. Applying for a waitress job at Nunzio’s made perfect sense.

      Her heart raced when she grabbed her son’s hand, because every step she took brought her closer to the woman who could be her mother.

      “C’mon, Joe-Joe,” Kaylee said. “We’re going to Nunzio’s.”

      ANOTHER DAY, another impostor. This one had brought her son along.

      Tony saw her as soon as he entered Nunzio’s, the most logical place in McIntosh to meet with a stranger. The place not only smelled wonderful—a mouthwatering mixture of tomato sauce, garlic bread and spices—but the homey atmosphere was inviting. Checkered red-and-white tablecloths covered the booths and tables, and scenic vistas of Italy decorated the walls.

      Tony had suggested meeting at three o’clock, because it was between lunch and dinner. The only people in the restaurant were an elderly couple sitting at a corner table near the entrance, a young boy of about five or six and the woman.

      The woman sat with the boy in a rear booth, although the latest in the string of females he mentally referred to as “the Connies” hadn’t said anything about bringing her son.

      Yesterday’s Connie had been a petite bleached blonde he’d frightened off with surprising ease. When Sofia was in the restroom, he’d threatened to investigate her background for past crimes and outstanding warrants. She’d bolted when he got to the part about pressing charges against her for fraud.

      Although Tony had been in McIntosh for nearly a week, this would be his first meeting with a Connie without Sofia present. He’d set this one up on the sly, wanting to spare his stepmother more disappointment.

      At least this Connie looked the part.

      Long, wavy hair more black than brown set off by an orangey knit sweater. Eyes he could tell were nearly that dark even from across the room. Features that didn’t fit America’s cookie-cutter notion of beauty but that Tony found much more intriguing. Even the Mediterranean cast of her skin was right.

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