the schedule was a consequence of her stupidity.
“Never mind, and don’t think for a minute I won’t check your time card!” He jogged away. Givens jogged everywhere. Maybe that’s why he was so skinny.
When Arturo Gomez came upon her later in the morning, he stood watching her with his hands on his hips, a frown creasing his forehead.
“You’re lifting heavy boxes again, Lilly. I have told you to call me when you need help.”
She stood on the rolling platform balancing an unwieldy box that held steering wheel covers.
“I’m fine,” came her muffled reply. She squeezed the box onto the shelf between two others, dusted off her hands and came down the ladder pushing up her glasses as she did so.
“Have you had your break?”
“Oh, you know me, Mr. Gomez. I don’t like to take breaks, especially today. I need to get home as soon as possible.” If she didn’t take her fifteen-minute break and didn’t take lunch, and if the store wasn’t busy when it was nearly time for her to leave, she could clock out before her shift ended. She did everything possible to keep from thinking about what must be happening to her poor house. At least Annie hadn’t called so apparently no disaster had occurred. She hoped.
“I understand. Thank you for doing such an excellent job of restocking the shelves.”
Mr. Gomez always said thank you. Mr. Givens and some of the other department supervisors generally found a reason to criticize as if by doing so they were flexing their managerial muscles. Lilly much preferred working with Mr. Gomez.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“What?”
“You seem not yourself today.”
She wasn’t quite sure why she did it (sharing confidences with co-workers had never been her thing), but she said, “My niece and her children have come to stay with me. This is their first day here.”
“Ah! Family! There is nothing like family.”
Lilly’s nose twitched.“Well, I best get back to work. I won’t have this all out before another shipment comes in.” They both laughed politely. It was a done-to-death, and not at all funny joke at ShopMart: the never-ending cycle of merchandise.
As it turned out Billy Givens made sure she didn’t get out early. He insisted she help housewares finish putting out a box of fall décor items. She’d thought she was long past letting him get on her nerves. Today his rude bossiness tried her patience more than usual. By the time she was out the door and on her way home she was steaming.
She thought of all the things she could—maybe should—have said, but they all boiled down to the childish, “You’re not the boss of me!” she’d heard kindergartners say in Sunday school. But of course, he was the boss of her while she was at ShopMart.
Chapter Five — Where Am I?
Annie moved with sluggish precision. She had put Caleb to work cleaning the garage. He’d been the one who insisted the stupid dog had to come with them.
“What’ll happen to him, Mom? If we don’t take him he’ll go to the pound and you know what they do.”
Marie, always alert to an opportunity for drama, had come in at that moment.
“Not take Krank? But Mo-om, if we don’t take him he might die!”
“He’ll die, all right,” Caleb had said, taking advantage of this unexpected support. “They’ll kill him dead at the pound.”
Marie’s eyes had grown big and she’d wailed. “Dead? Mom we gotta take him, we gotta!”
Alex, who had been sleeping, awoke to all the commotion and entered the fray with hiccupping sobs in defense of he knew not what, just that his brother and sister were upset, which for Alex was quite enough.
She’d given in of course. For one thing the dog was a good companion for the children. There were times when she had to be at work and there was no one to watch after them. Krank wouldn’t hurt a fly but just the size and look of the gallumping animal would scare the pants off a person.
Annie was putting things away in the drawers of the dresser Mrs. Irish had told her she and Marie could share. She looked up and caught her reflection. She wanted to look away but couldn’t tear her eyes from the image confronting her. God, when had she gotten so old looking? Was it that she was tired? With a little rest and a lot less stress would that beaten, bedraggled look go away?
She ran long slender fingers through her mass of chestnut hair. Like the rest of her it looked dull and lifeless. She picked up a tube of lipstick and toyed with the idea of adding color by painting her lips, but set the tube back down. It would take a lot more than lipstick to improve the way she looked. There wasn’t much of anything that would make her feel better.
Had she made the right decision? Coming to her aunt, a woman whom she hadn’t seen in years, was a risk but she had run out of options. She couldn’t stay living in the city. The unsettling feeling she was being followed or watched grew to the point she couldn’t walk five steps without looking over her shoulder. It had started not long after Marie was born and grown more persistent and oppressive over the years.
She’d thought she’d escaped when she’d moved to San Diego but instead she’d walked into a different kind of hell. Oh, she had brought it on herself, no doubt. Elvin Caparelli, her boss at the fine dining restaurant where she worked, had come on to her countless times, but she had always put him off with a joke. When he caught her alone one night after closing he’d cornered her and laughed off her protests.
“You’ve been coming on to me since you started working here, now it’s time to get down to business.” He was drunk, he was bigger, he was stronger, and really he was right, after all. When they first met she wasattracted to him, until she found out he was married.
When he was done with her he’d walked away without a word, buckling his belt and humming You Are My Sunshine. Even now, years after the rape, hearing that tune made Annie sick to her stomach.
For hours after Caparelli left she sat huddled in a corner shaking uncontrollably. She should have left that night, picked up her kids and taken off, but she made good money at the restaurant. As the sole support for Caleb and Marie she couldn’t afford to walk away. She thought about reporting him, but that would lead to a nightmare her kids would get caught up in. She’d never thought of Caparelli’s flirting as sexual harassment. To make such a charge after the fact would lead to a he said/she said free-for-all she didn’t want to deal with. She hadn’t encouraged his attention but wasn’t sure how her actions would be seen by others.
Still angry, traumatized and sick with shame she went to work the following day not knowing what to expect, but it was like nothing had happened. The man ignored her, as if she didn’t exist, and then the reports of poor performance began to show up. She was called in by the restaurant owner and questioned about incidents that never occurred or were blown out of proportion. Popular among customers and the rest of the staff she was able to ride it out. About the time everything settled down (probably because Caparelli had set his eyes on one of the newest waitresses), she realized her missed periods were more than the unpredictable nature of her menstrual cycles. Had it not been for Caleb and Marie, and the baby growing inside her, she might have driven her car off a cliff and ended her crappy third-rate soap opera existence.
Annie closed her eyes and held back the sobs that desperately tried to escape, the way they had the night before when she’d found Marie in Mrs. Irish’s bedroom. There was something about the woman that comforted her, giving her permission to cry. Was it because she was her mother’s sister? They looked nothing alike. Mrs. Irish was a sweet looking woman, comfortable in her plumpness and at peace with herself. Still she didn’t want that to happen again. The woman would think she was a wreck.
“Momma?” Alex tugged at her jeans.
She