Chapter 1
I was not having a mid-life crisis no matter what my friends might have said when they found out I’d left. The decision to pack up and leave everything behind wasn’t irrational. It was going to be the most logical thing I had ever done, in theory.
Everyone has a breaking point, and I had reached mine. Enough was enough. I was done. Done with the commute…done with the smog…done with the crowds. Done with fake people and the even faker tits that basked in the LA sun and I was most definitely done with my former boyfriend, Anthony, and his perfect wife getting pregnant with kid number three.
There it was; the straw that broke the camel’s back.
So, I left. It felt good, too. For once in my life, I was taking charge of my own destiny. At least, that’s what I kept telling my mother’s voice each time she popped into my head during the twenty-three hour drive across the country.
Julie, honey, what are you running from?
Really bad choices, Ma.
When are you going to settle down and make me some grandbabies?
Um, never.
Maybe you could go back to school and finish your degree this time? It’s so hard to explain to people what it is you do.
Tell them I work in an office. I’m a temp. It’s not that hard.
Why don’t you move back home? I heard Daniel Howards got divorced.
Thanks, Ma, I’ll pass.
Those are the types of questions my mother would ask if I called—which is precisely why I didn’t when I left. I chose to avoid the lectures and reminders that I had failed in life, yet again. I just wanted out.
My mother, of course, had no idea about my affair with Anthony. If she had discovered that I was the other woman she would have gotten down on bended knee and prayed for my soul, even though she hadn’t been to church in years. The fact that her daughter had been sleeping around with a married man for the last three years, however, might be enough to send her back.
I’d send her a text whenever I landed someplace. When it was too late for her to talk me out of it.
The plan had been to end in Maine, the literal farthest away I could get from LA, but I ended up pulling over somewhere in New Hampshire to ask directions from a woman who was putting up a For Rent sign in her yard. We started chatting, and I decided, on the spot, I needed to live in that house.
New Hampshire was just as a good a state as any, as far as I was concerned. Now all that was left to do was unpack. Not that I’d brought much. Only as much stuff that fit in the rented SUV. The rest, I’d left behind, along with a note to my landlord letting him know not to expect a renewal of my lease. But before I began unloading the car to officially start my new life, I needed wine. And maybe some Doritos. Okay, and some ice cream too.
Thanks to the GPS in the SUV, I found the center of town…if you could call it that, and I pulled into the lot of the most Mayberry-looking grocery store anyone could possibly imagine.
“It’s gotta have wine…even Andy Griffith needed to get drunk now and then.”
I found my way inside and winced at the slight jingle noise the door made as I entered.
“Wow.” That was the only word I could come up with for a store as tiny as this. It had five aisles total and not one dedicated for booze. This might be a problem. It was a far cry from the Big Saver stores I was accustomed to.
I grabbed one of the few carts by the door and started the hunt. Mercifully, the end of the first aisle had a small selection of alcoholic choices. I grabbed the biggest bottle of red wine they had and placed it into my cart where it rolled around precariously, as though drunk on its own existence.
One essential down. The chips proved to be a bit harder to find. I frowned. Nothing was where it should be. Why were food stores all so different? Couldn’t they have a meeting or something and all agree on the same basic layout? No, instead, I had to waste my barely viable years searching for panty liners, olives, and makeup to cover up the zit growing on my forehead. Apparently, that defined life in your forties: leakage, sodium cravings, and acne. Honestly, when was the zit thing going to end? Sure, I’d been under a lot of stress lately, but was it really necessary to give me a third eye too?
Annoyed, I shoved the cart forward and began rolling my shoulders in small circles to ease some of the tension lodged there from the long hours behind the wheel. I’d never driven so long in such a short time and had no intention of doing it again. Not that I could, even if I wanted to. My funds were all but dried up.
I had saved some money by sleeping in my car at night instead of staying in a hotel, leaving me with about two hundred bucks to my name. I tried not to feel guilty about putting in a second bag of chips. I’d earned those.
As I rounded the corner in search of ice cream, I almost crashed, head on, into another cart. My wine rolled to the end of its metal cage and gave off a cringe-worthy thunk but, thankfully, remained intact.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the lady pushing the offending cart said. I glared at her for almost murdering my wine while I sized her up. She was about my age, maybe a few years younger, with a pudgy toddler in the front of her cart grabbing at everything within his sticky grasp. I tried not to gag at the crusty boogers lining the edge of his nose. I shivered. Kids were so gross.
“It’s okay,” I mumbled, trying to weave my cart around her.
The woman’s smile abruptly faded. Likely because she realized I was an out-of-towner. Her eyes grew wide, and she took a step back. She gaped at me as though trying to form a sentence. Engaging in small talk with the locals was not high on my agenda, so I whipped around to the next aisle and came face to face with a line of purple and green plastic packages. Oh, pads. Excellent. One step closer to leaving this joint and drowning myself in wine.
When I placed the liners in my cart, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watched, so I turned to glance behind me and saw the same woman sneaking a peek at me through an endcap of beef jerky before she dashed away.
“Okay…” Clearly, these small town folks didn’t like strangers in their midst.
Opting to pass up the hunt for mint chocolate chip ice cream just to get the hell out of Dodge, I made my way toward the sole checkout person. Sole. As in…they only had one register. Not just one lane open. One lane total. Maybe moving to New Hampshire wasn’t such a good idea.
I let out a breath and got in line behind a man in his seventies getting a shit-ton of cat food. Each can rang up by hand.
Oh. My. God. I’m going to die waiting for this man to get his month’s supply of cat food.
Then again, maybe this was what life in a small town would teach me: to slow down, smell the roses and all that jazz. I mean, it wasn’t as if I were late for anything. I had no job, and no one was waiting for me back at the rental. So why lose my cool over the change of pace? Embrace it, Jules. The wine will still taste as sweet an hour from now.
The towers of tuna slowly disseminated, exposing a sliver of the black conveyor belt, so I started to put my own items down.
“Looks like Hansel and Gretel prefer the flaked salmon,” the woman at the register was saying as she plucked at the keys.
“Oh, they love it, Penny,” the man said. “Hansel will try and get Gretel’s before she’s even done. I have to separate them when they eat.”
The woman nodded sagely. “I have to do that with my three too,” she said, bagging the cans in one of the cloth bags he had brought. “Oh, and you got one of those Lean Cuisines. You on a diet, Frank?”
My eyes widened in horror. Was this woman going to talk to me about my purchases as well? Would she seriously ask me if my panty liners really were super absorbent? Or if that liter and a half bottle of wine was just for me? Doesn’t she know the Cashier Code? Ask the customers if they found everything and how they want their items bagged. That’s it. Take their money and move on. Do not engage. Do. Not. Engage.
I began to panic about what I was going to say to her when I noticed the old man handed her a few bills. Actual paper money. Did this joint even have a credit card machine? I looked around and didn’t see any signs of one. Oh, hell. I was screwed.
Digging into my purse, I fished around in my wallet and, luckily, found a few twenties I had shoved in there before I left LA. The cash was all I had left from the sale of my promise ring; the one Anthony had given me. The ring that meant absolutely nothing in the end.
The cashier said her goodbyes to the cat man before she looked up at me with that same stranger-danger stare the lady with the snotty-nosed kid had given me.
“Do I know you?” she asked, slowly taking my liners and pulling them closer to the register.
“I highly doubt it,” I said, reaching into my purse, this time to find my sunglasses.
She continued to bag the groceries with a watchful eye.
“Not from around these parts?”
“Nope.”
“It’s a little early for the foliage to bloom. Most tourists come by next month.”
“Foliage? I could care less about leaf color,” I said.
She nodded slowly. “So, just passing through, then?” she fished.
“Look, can I just pay for my food and go?”
She gawked up at me, clearly offended, but sped up, nonetheless.
“You got an ID for the wine?” Her cheery tone had left.
I lowered my glasses and blinked at her. “I’m forty-two.”
She pursed her lips. “And as soon as you show me that ID, you can have the wine.”
So much for small town charm. I sighed and dug back into my purse for my ID but couldn’t find it.
“Shit. It must have fallen out it in the car.”
“Mmhmm,” she said, sliding the wine aside, away from my bags. This chick was actually confiscating my wine!
Behind me, sticky-kid-lady started to unload her items. She and the cashier exchanged a few glances, probably making fun of me in their small town hick code way. I turned to glare at the mom. I saw her pointing at something behind me. She froze when she caught me looking at her.
“What?” I asked them. Neither woman said anything, but the cashier bagged the bottle of wine.
“No charge, dear. You have yourself a good day. New Hampshire welcomes you back.” She smiled at me.
Confused, I snatched the bags and started to leave the store, pausing only when I spotted the object of their attention. It was nothing more that a large display of cheesy tabloids. I frowned and was about to turn away when I noticed something.
“What the hell?” I whispered, yanking my sunglasses off.
On the cover of every single magazine was a picture of a woman who looked exactly like me.
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