Midnight in Brussels Read Online Free Page B

space.” Amanda turned to add garnish to the plate as she gave a moment’s thought about the eligible rancher sitting at one of her tables with a shit-eatin’ grin that made her nervous.
    As handsome as he was and as much as she was wondering if his pecker looked like Arlie’s, she shut him out of her mind as she picked up the steak plate and grabbed the bread and left the kitchen.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 5
     
    On Monday Amanda walked down the long driveway to the mailbox as usual. Paula and Drake Livingston had built on ten acres along the Kern River outside of town. But then Bakersfield is more of a city than a town with its population of 340,000. A city that is surrounded by oil fields, ranches and farms, a city made up of blue and white collar workers, medical professionals, college faculties and students, a growing corporate element, migrant farm workers, and sad to say … the homeless and unemployed.
    The Livingstons were proud of their 7,000 square-foot home with barns, garages and sheds to accommodate Drake’s trucking business - a fabulous spread. It was a far cry from the log cabins of their youth in Arkansas.
    But for Amanda there was far too much activity there. She had become accustomed to being a recluse while living in the Nevada desert, and then again, maybe she’d been one all along, maybe even in Arkansas while growing up.
    She had spent many hours alone at her grandmother’s cabin in the woods outside Mountain Home where she was born and raised. Her sister Paula was older and had her own friends and habits, so she wasn’t there most of the time. Maybe Amanda subconsciously preferred to be alone. She remembered reading somewhere, “You are where or what you’re supposed to be, otherwise you’d be somewhere or somebody else.” Maybe she was supposed to have lived her first twenty-three years as a hermit.
    Arlie and Amanda had gone to school together in the small Arkansas town and had been girlfriend and boyfriend by the time they were both thirteen, and they quit school and got married when they were sixteen. Amanda had never worked because Arlie didn’t want her to work. She’d learned how to make her own clothes from her mother who had been a seamstress, so that helped pass the time. She’d buy used clothing from Goodwill or the Salvation Army, and there were always the castoffs from the people in the trailer park in the bins by the convenience store. She used some of the recycled clothing to recreate and design garments for herself – sundresses, aprons, skirts and blouses, and sometimes shirts for Arlie.
    She had always thought she could take in sewing or do ironing if she had to, but going for a job outside the home wasn’t a choice for her. Arlie said he’d always take care of her and he did ‘til he fell off the face of the earth in spite of his promise. In that first six months after he’d disappeared, daily she swayed back and forth from feeling totally distraught and depressed to feeling spitfire angry at him for leaving her in such a predicament. But now things were different, that was all behind her.
    She opened the oversized mailbox that her brother-in-law Drake had set in a square river-rock column that he had built. The box was full and she lifted out the stack of mail, clumps at a time to sift through, hoping the check from Johnny would be there.
    “It came! It’s here!”She screamed with glee, and ran towards the house with her arms full, dropping mail, stooping to pick it up, dropping more mail, stooping again, and then running.
      Now she would find an apartment of her own in town near KC’s. That’s what she wanted more than anything. She’d thought of nothing else in the past few weeks. It was time for her to be on her own, to be alone again. Only this time she was looking forward to it, she needed it.
    Maybe she could buy a car now, too, if she could find a cheap one. She’d been putting money into a savings account, but didn’t