Small-Town Dreams and The Girl Next Door: Small-Town Dreams / The Girl Next Door

For the first time since her childhood when she woke up with her grandfather sitting at her bedside in a Colorado hospital, she had no one planning her next step in life. No. This next move was all her own to make.

Rather than feeling free, Cassidy felt suddenly very alone. With her grandfather out of the equation, she had no one to rely on. He was all she had. Her friends were really more acquaintances, and most of them, save a neighbor or two, worked at Jamison.

She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, narrowing her blue eyes. When had she gotten so drawn looking? She fussed with her short, straight, blond hair for a second and bit her full bottom lip. What do you want, Cassidy Jamison? Where do you want to go?

“I want to get away from the rat race,” she said aloud to the near-stranger in the mirror. “I need time to just think.”

A penny winked up at her from next to the nearly empty antacid roll in the console. She remembered a scene from a book she’d read several years earlier. The hero had flipped a coin—a penny—and had driven toward his uncertain future, giving the coin the power he no longer felt over his life. At each crossroad, he’d let the penny send him wherever it chose. Right then, feeling adrift, she felt an acute kinship with that character and decided her discarded penny just might know more than she did about her life’s choices.

She picked it up, turned it over in her hand and stared down at old Abe Lincoln’s coppery visage. Above his head were words she’d seen all her life and never really read. In God we trust.

Cassidy wondered suddenly if there was a God. She remembered vaguely her parents talking about Him. But God hadn’t been part of her upbringing under her grandfather’s rule. Recalling her father’s calm, easy smile, she wondered if maybe that was part of her problem. She flipped the coin. Caught it. Slapped it down on the back of her hand. “If You’re up there, God, send me where I need to go. Heads north, tails south,” she called, then peeked. Honest Abe stared up at her again. “North,” she said, then wondered once again if she or some higher power had control of her destiny.

Winston Jamison turned from the window that looked out over Rittenhouse Square when a sharp knock echoed through his office door. “Come,” he called.

His longtime secretary walked in and as far as his desk. She stood, arms crossed, and glared at him. “She hasn’t answered her pages or her cell phone. I’ve tried her apartment. No go there, either.”

“Where could she have gone?”

“Well, I doubt she went to cry on a friend’s shoulder. Thanks to her hours these last several years, she hasn’t got any close friends.”

Rose had been with him for years. He’d kept her with generous raises and stock options. He’d kept her because he couldn’t intimidate her. But just now, he wished he’d fired her thirty years ago at the first sign of insubordination. He scowled, knowing it wouldn’t cow her in the least. “I’m sure there’s a saltshaker in that credenza over there. Care to throw some into the wound?”

She tapped her foot and moved her hands to her ample hips. “Don’t think I’m not tempted. Why on earth did you do it?”

“I didn’t have a choice. The job would have been too much for her. I did it for her own good.”

“You told her the vice presidency was hers. You told me it was hers. Why the last-minute change? I’ve never known you to vacillate like this.”

“I was trying to save her from herself. And from me. I love that girl, Rose. This place is dragging her down. The circles under her eyes have circles.”

“So this was for her own good? That child was in tears! I’ve never seen her cry in all the years I’ve known her!”

He winced. “I was wrong to insist she come in to the business. I’m trying to right a wrong.”

“Oh? Now you see it, when you managed to ignore a double major and her real talent? What, pray tell, caused this sudden revelation?”

He knew he deserved her scorn, but he felt the need to squirm and didn’t like it in the least! Instead he walked to his desk and sat in his big leather chair. “I overheard a conversation she had with her doctor last week. She has an ulcer, Rose. And it’s my fault.”

She sat in the chair where Cassidy had been sitting just a few hours earlier. “But to pull the rug out from under her like that was cruel.”

“It was a last-minute decision. I just couldn’t let her take on more. But I intended to explain. I really did. But she started shouting. Then I did. I lost sight of what I wanted to say and defended my choice instead. Before I knew it, she was storming out. By the time I calmed down enough to realize what had happened, she was gone.”

Rose shook her head in disgust. “For your sake, I hope she isn’t gone for good.”

“You know, Rose, if I knew where she was, that would be okay with me. Just so she’s happy.”

Dusk had just settled into darkness when the six-lane interstate Cassidy was traveling narrowed rather abruptly to one lane in each direction. She drove about ten miles farther, getting anxious about the denseness of the timberland that now surrounded her.

When the Pocono Mountains had loomed ahead of her at the Lehigh Tunnel, she’d gotten excited about the possibilities they held. She’d decided to really cut loose on this vacation and pick up a sketch pad and some charcoal. Since then, she’d seen numerous valleys and stark slopes of bare deciduous trees dotted with deep green pines that she itched to sketch.

But when that vast expanse of trees had formed a dark, oppressive tunnel with no evidence of a town or resort anywhere, the countryside had become frightening. Then, just as she decided to turn around because civilization had not made its presence known, the car that had been her stalwart companion for nearly five hours suddenly coughed and bucked as she crested a hill. It settled down again when she pressed a little harder on the accelerator, but whenever she slowed down to stop and turn around, it nearly stalled.

Cassidy was left with a dilemma: she had to continue on or risk getting stuck right there, which she feared was miles from nowhere. Just the thought of breaking down amidst the darkness and thick woodlands turned up the acidic burning in her stomach another notch. The pounding in her head seemed to turn up its volume by a hundred decibels, as well.

Several hundred yards farther down the road, a sign proclaimed that the town of Mountain View, Pennsylvania, population three hundred, was only a couple of miles ahead. Reassured, she had traveled on about a mile before the car bucked again.

Cassidy could just see the tiny town, a few lights winking in the distance, when the car stalled for the first time. She got it started, but several hundred yards farther down the road it coughed again and stalled. After several tries it did turn over, but continued to buck and cough as she lumbered down the road. She barely was able to limp the car into Earl’s Car Emporium in the center of town. No sooner had she pulled to a stop than the engine died.

Cassidy would have felt more confident in Earl’s had the weathered wood and faded sign looked the way they did for quaint effect rather than from years of neglect and aging. She got out to look around. Rusting and greasy car parts overflowed several fifty-five gallon drums next to the rustic building. The sound of country music, a metallic pounding and the odd grumble, floated out of a crooked doorway in what she thought was a converted barn.

The disgruntled voice was not reassuring.

“Mr. Earl?” Cassie called over the music as she gingerly pushed open the door. “Hello. Could someone help me?”

“Eh? What’s that?” a gravelly voice called. “Oh, well, hey there, girly. What can I help you with? Directions to Appleton?”

“Actually, my car’s acting up.”

Cassidy watched as a man in a greasy hat peered over the lifted hood of a car. When the mechanic came out from behind his current project, she remembered her grandfather describing someone as a long drink of water, and knew the description fit Mister—.

“Mister Earl?” she asked, and hoped he was better at his work than he was at keeping clean. Cassidy pulled off the glasses she only wore for driving and perched them on top of her blond head.

The man’s pale blue eyes crinkled at the corners in a smile that he didn’t betray with his mouth. “Just Earl. Earl Pedmont,” he said, and offered her his hand.

Cassidy automatically reached out to shake it. But Earl only awkwardly squeezed her fingers. When his eyes rose to look into hers, it was his look of consternation that made her realize her error. And his.

He smiled in obvious discomfort, let go and stepped back, tipping his cap in a surprisingly courtly manner. “How do, little lady.”

Cassidy looked down at her now-greasy hand, then back up at Earl, trying to hide her annoyance. “I’ve been better,” she answered truthfully. “As I said, my car is acting up. It started a few miles ago. Coughing and bucking. For a while it evened out when I accelerated. Then it started stalling, no matter what I did. I barely made it to town.”

Earl nodded. “Hmm. Let’s take a look,” he said as he turned toward the door and made his way outside.

She followed, trying not to cringe at the idea of his coveralls coming in contact with her creamy leather interior when he climbed into her pride and joy.

After starting the car and listening to the engine run a few seconds, then stall, he pursed his lips and nodded sagely. “’Pears to me you’ll be spending some time here in Mountain View, little lady. ‘Less you got a husband who can come get you, that is.” He gave her a friendly gap-toothed smile.

“No husband,” she answered, ignoring the pang in the region of her heart. Sometimes her life seemed so empty. What good was earning tons of money with no time to spend it and no one to spend it on? Especially when you didn’t earn all that money in a way that was in the least fulfilling.

“That’s good. That’s good,” Earl replied, still grinning.

His grin suddenly made Cassidy nervous. “Why do you say that?”

“Wouldn’t want him to be worrying ‘bout you being stuck here so far from home. Ain’t a nice world no more for young ladies. Guess since you don’t have a husband, you’ll be staying with us for a while.”

She looked around what she could see of the town. Stay? Here? Was he crazy? When the mountains had loomed ahead, a picture of her next few weeks had flashed into her head. A luxury suite. A chic hotel shop where she could buy a sketch pad and some clothes. A four-star restaurant, or maybe even room service for her meals. Calling this a one-horse town would be kind.

Cassidy looked back at Earl’s smiling face and wondered why he looked so pleased. “What’s wrong with my car?” she asked, trying to ignore the thought that had rocketed into her brain. What did one do in Mountain View, PA? Watch the grass grow? The frost settle?