West of Nowhere (5 page)

Joy was putting away the last of the dishes.

“I’m sorry. I could have done that.”

“No big deal. Finding your friend was more important.”

“I bet you’re ready to get rid of me tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t say that, but I think you’ll be happier once you’re back with people you know.”

“I hope I like Colorado. I’ve always loved the mountains.”

If Molly couldn’t get her hired as a housekeeper, she’d try to get shift work somewhere in the evening, maybe at a restaurant. That would free her up to go hiking and exploring in the daytime. After all her years in a city like Nashville, it would be nice to be close to nature for a change.

“I don’t think Limon has any mountains,” Joy said. “I drove through there when I moved back to California three years ago. If I remember correctly, it’s a lot like Kansas…really flat with thunderstorms and tornadoes. An old railroad town, I think.”

“You must be thinking of a different place. Molly said there were a bunch of motels there so it has to be some kind of tourist town.”

“I doubt it. Several highways intersect there. That’s probably why they have so many motels. You should look it up on my laptop while I finish.”

“It’s okay. I’m going to hit the shower and get ready for bed.” If Limon turned out to be a hellhole, she’d rather not know about it tonight.

Joy hated to disturb Amber, who was sleeping peacefully with Skippy tucked under her arm, but it was seven a.m.—time to eat breakfast and roll out. Limon was nearly six hours down the road under the best of conditions, but they were driving into a massive thunderstorm that would slow traffic and have Joy wrestling with crosswinds.

Fearing Skippy would snap at her, she opted to wake Amber with her voice instead of jostling her. It took several shouts before she finally stirred.

“God, this bed…that was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in years. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have to sleep with Corey. I hope he got bedbugs at his hotel last night.”

When she rolled back the covers and swung her bare legs to the floor, Joy whirled away on impulse, realizing Amber was wearing only a long T-shirt with nothing underneath. She was practiced in such avoidance from her years in the navy, where a lingering gaze could lead to a dishonorable discharge.

“Do you drink coffee?”

“Gallons,” Amber replied groggily. She pulled on the faded denim skirt she had worn the day before and clipped Skippy’s leash to his collar.

Joy had gone to bed the night before trying to think who Amber reminded her of and was startled when it came to her—her ex-partner Syd. It wasn’t anything to do with the way she looked, since they couldn’t have been more different. Syd was a large woman, not fat but big-boned, and she had straight black hair. Amber looked like a shopworn Tinkerbell.

No, the main similarity was the way they both sought to hitch their wagons to whoever could take them along. Syd was overtly sexual in her quest, turning on her sad brown eyes and pouty lips whenever she wanted something, an act that had usually resulted in Joy falling all over herself to please her. Amber’s look was genuine desperation, but it triggered the same sort of emotional reaction in Joy—the urge to come to the rescue.

Knowing her tendency to respond to women in distress was not the same as accepting it. For the last four years she’d berated herself for being Syd’s patsy, especially since she’d practically rolled over and given up all claim to Madison. Syd had her over a barrel because she couldn’t fight for custody without her personal details coming to light, a move that would have ended her navy career. Had she known she’d be leaving only a few months later to help take care of her mother, she would have put up more of a fight. To this day, she felt guilty for putting the navy ahead of Madison.

Breakfast was simple fare, cereal with bananas and coffee. Joy wanted to get on the road quickly. After dropping Amber in Limon, she hoped to push herself for eight more hours all the way to Evanston, Wyoming, which would put her in striking distance of getting home late Friday night.

To shorten her long day, she set the cruise control at eighty, five miles above the limit. That would get her into the RV park around eight o’clock, thanks to the extra hour she’d pick up crossing into Mountain Time.

Amber kicked off her shoes and rested her feet on the dashboard, causing Skippy to stand, twirl twice, and settle back into the same position in her lap. “You know, my friend Molly is gay too. In fact…well, when we lived together, we shared a room…and a bed. So you might not be the only gay person in this truck. How about that?”

“Hmm.” That explained Amber’s live-and-let-live attitude, but Joy doubted someone who had lived mostly in relationships with men was ambivalent about her sexuality. “Most of the lesbians I know tend not to have boyfriends.”

“I don’t know about that, but I bet I’d have been a lot happier if they’d been women. Corey had this other girlfriend, a woman named Rachelle. Sometimes she’d stay over too and one time we all—”

“Oh, no! Too much information.” Joy started singing “Home on the Range” loudly when it became obvious Amber was enjoying the torturous effect her personal details were having.

“What? You never did a three-way?” Amber was practically giddy.

“I did not. One at a time, thank you, and never, ever with a man. That is the definition of a lesbian.”

“If you say so. But I bet there are a lot of lesbians out there who end up with guys just because it’s easier. Or maybe they never felt like they had a choice. Doesn’t mean they aren’t lesbians.”

Joy knew that firsthand, thanks to Syd, who couldn’t deal with the stress of secrecy and yearned to fit in with everyone else. She had never learned to define her life with her own identity, choosing instead to be a reflection of whomever she was with. “Being a lesbian isn’t just who you decide to sleep with. It’s who you are.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

Joy silently conceded it was, but gave Amber a skeptical look just the same. A journey of self-discovery was one thing. Dabbling in both worlds when it suited you was another.

“Did you get that problem with your dad worked out last night? Sounded like you were going at it with somebody.”

Joy groaned. “I can’t believe these people. I found four different agencies that do home health care but all of them say they don’t allow their workers to lift. Something about their insurance not covering back injuries. I told them my pop didn’t need to be lifted. He just needs someone to provide a little leverage so he can lift himself without having to use his bum shoulder.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s been in a wheelchair for twenty-some years, but he’s got good upper body strength, so he can do just about everything on his own. In fact, he absolutely hates it when he has to ask for help.” She didn’t add that he’d grown even more stubborn about it since her mother died, and was getting worse every year. “Last week he went for his poker night at the American Legion and took a header when his chair caught a bump on the ramp. Broke his shoulder and had to have surgery. It happened the day after I left with Madison, but he didn’t even tell me about it for three days because he knew I’d turn around and come back.”

“How long is he going to be like that?”

“The doctor said he had to let it heal for eight weeks and keep getting physical therapy for a couple of months after that. If I know Pop, he’ll try to cut that in half, and he’ll hurt himself even worse. Right now, he’s stuck at the rehab center until I can get somebody lined up to come to the house while I’m at work. And that’s the other thing. I have to be at work at five o’clock in the morning and they say it’s hard to schedule someone to come that early. The only way they can guarantee it is if we hire two shifts—midnight to eight, and eight to four.”

“That’s freaking ridiculous.”

“No kidding. That’s twice as much money just to cover three measly hours.”

“No, I meant you having to be at work at five o’clock. That’s insane.”

Joy gave Amber a sidelong look and was only half surprised to realize she wasn’t kidding.

Amber said, “The best I ever managed was eight thirty at the Friendly Mart and half the time I was late.”

“You were lucky you weren’t fired.”

“I was.” With that, she laughed. “Seriously, how do you go to work at five o’clock in the morning? Are you a vampire or something?”

“Our first plane rolls out at six. I have to get it loaded and fueled.”

“In your little orange vest.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.” Joy had no problem being teased as long as she was sure that’s what it was. “You wouldn’t want me to get crushed by a 737, would you?”

“You wouldn’t believe the getup they made me wear when I worked at Taco Loco…it was one of those Mexican ponchos. It looked like a rug with a hole in it for my head. And at the Friendly Mart, they gave me this blue smock with half the snaps broken off. It had coffee and grease stains all over it that wouldn’t come out. So nasty.”

“My orange vest is sounding better all the time.”

“How did you end up working at an airport? That actually sounds kind of fun, except for the five o’clock part.”

Joy’s hand crept over to pet Skippy, who eyed her nervously but for the first time didn’t growl. “I was a plane handler in the navy. I spent nine years working on the deck of an aircraft carrier, the USS
Theodore Roosevelt.
We called it the Big Stick, because that was TR’s motto. ‘Walk softly and carry a big stick.’ It was my job to get all the planes in position to launch and then put them back in the hangar.”

“You lived on a boat for nine years?”

She cringed at what most in the navy considered an epithet. “The
TR
was not a boat. It was a
Nimitz
-class nuclear powered supercarrier. But yes, we were deployed at least six months a year the whole time I was in the navy. Over five thousand of us on board. It was like a floating city.”

“I don’t know how you did that.” Amber shook her head vehemently. “I’d go crazy looking out at nothing all the time.”

“That’s only if you were lucky enough to look out. Some of those guys in the ship’s company stayed below deck for weeks at a time. They lost all sense of day and night. At least those of us in the air wing got outside nearly every day.”

“Yeah, I’d probably kill myself if I never got to go outside.”

“There were a lot of days going out on deck wasn’t much fun. We’d have rough seas and winds so strong we had to wear tethers on our belts to keep us from getting blown off the deck. Man, it was something else.”

“More power to you, but there’s no way they’d ever get my ass on one of those things. I like my feet dry, thank you very much.” Amber wiggled her toes, which sported dark red nail polish.

“It’s not for everyone.” She shuddered to think how fast someone like Amber would wash out in boot camp at Great Lakes. She’d barely make it off the bus before they sent her home.

Conversation died as the sky darkened and heavy rain began to pound the windshield. For more than an hour they crept along the highway with everyone else, barely keeping up with the taillights in front. All the time Joy had banked doing eighty was lost, and then some, putting Evanston out of reach for the night. As the storm finally broke, they found themselves crossing the Colorado state line.

Joy resumed her chatter but Amber had lost interest in conversation. By the worried look on her face, she was coming to grips with the reality of life in the middle of nowhere. When they stopped for lunch at the Colorado Welcome Center in Burlington, she stood in front of the truck with Skippy, staring into the horizon. Only seventy-nine miles to Limon and still not a mountain in sight. And hardly a tree, for that matter.

“You getting excited about seeing your friend?”

“I reckon,” she said, without a trace of enthusiasm. “You really think Limon’s as flat as this? It’s like one gigantic vacant lot out there.”

“There might be a rolling hill or two, but mostly…yeah, it’s a lot like this.”

“I guess beggars can’t be choosers. I just need to hang out long enough to get back on my feet…get some money saved. Maybe then I’ll buy me one of these and see the whole country.”

Joy felt a pang of sympathy but nodded along just the same. Amber probably knew such dreams were a long shot for someone in her position. Then again, that’s what made them dreams.

* * *

“There it is, the Gateway Lodge,” Amber said, her voice quiet with apprehension.

The motor lodge, a single-story L-shaped building painted pale green with white trim, sat barely fifty yards from the interstate off-ramp. Around the corner from the office was a rusted singlewide mobile home, and parked between the two structures in a patch of gravel and dust was a faded red pickup truck, its front fender a dull gray.

It was, without question, the most miserable place Amber had ever seen.

Joy pulled into the parking lot, turned around and backed into a space opposite the office. Though she put the vehicle in Park, she left the engine running, and with it, the low whir of the air conditioner. “Welcome to Limon, Colorado.”

Amber couldn’t will herself to move. The thought of working here—and perhaps even living in the trailer out back with the Jackson family—was almost as depressing as going back to Shelbyville. No matter how happy Molly was to see her, it wouldn’t be enough to make this place bearable.

The minutes ticked by while she summoned the courage to open the door, but Joy sat patiently, neither moving nor speaking.

Amber’s whole life was littered with reckless decisions like the one that had brought her here. Leaving Shelbyville without a plan for her future had made her dependent on Archie, two years of her life that had come to nothing. Then there was the taco job she’d quit because she couldn’t get the day off to go to a party. And she’d paid almost a thousand dollars to a vitamin marketing company on the promise she could earn it back four times over through phone sales that never materialized. Gullible, and with zero impulse control.