Mary Sullivan - Beyond Ordinary

“Why did you go alone?” Angel asked. Mama placed a soft warning hand on Angel’s shoulder that she ignored. “Why did you go without Mama?”

“Your Mama doesn’t like it there. Right, Missy?” Phil looked at Mama. She nodded.

“Do you remember Chester Ames?” Mama asked.

Angel remembered Chester. He used to treat Mama and her like gold.

“He opened a bar on Main Street,” Missy said.

Okay, that answered her question why Phil hadn’t taken Mama with him. Chester had a giant crush on Mama that time had never dimmed. Mama had always had a soft spot for him, too. Angel used to fantasize about how good life would be if Chester were her father. Chester had been married, though, and faithful to his wife.

Clearly Phil had picked up on that mutual at traction.

“Good for Chester. He’s a great guy,” Angel said, her emphasis implying that he was a better man than Phil.

“I can take you there tomorrow night,” Phil said.

Not on your life. “No, thanks. Mama, I’m heading to bed. We can talk more in the morning.”

Angel passed Phil without a backward glance. For the sake of Mama’s happiness, Angel would consider that he might be good for Mama in some way that Angel hadn’t yet determined. She would try as hard as possible in the next few days to see him from Mama’s point of view. But no way was she ignoring her instincts. While checking for the good, she would also watch for the ways in which Phil was trouble.

MISSY FELT PHIL STIR beside her and roll out of bed. Sitting on the side of the mattress, he pulled on his underwear then left the room.

Her breasts hurt, ached, and a weird sort of…stopped-up feeling…throbbed in her lower belly. Sex with Phil never satisfied her.

He wasn’t big enough—in his size or in his attention to her needs. Sex was about him and what he wanted. She was dumb enough to always give in.

Lord knew she had needs. Always had.

Face it, Missy, you’re forty-five years old. Phil is thirty-five. You’ll do anything to keep him.

You would think a man Phil’s age would have more energy, more to give a woman.

She listened to him shuffle down the hall, noted that he slowed in front of Angel’s room. She bit her lip.

A grown woman shouldn’t be jealous of her own daughter, but Missy was feeling her age.

Angel was young and beautiful. Men fell all over her. They used to do that with Missy.

What if Phil left? Where would that leave her?

With no one.

The darkness pressed in on her. She remembered those days after her own mother had left.

“You’re sixteen now, kid. Take care of yourself.”

“Mama, not yet. I can’t. I’m not smart like you.”

“With a body and face like yours, you’ll do fine.”

“Please don’t go.” Missy had pleaded more.

Mama had left anyway.

In the trailer alone, with no way to support herself, to finish high school, with no skills, Missy had turned to men. They liked her body. She had learned early to lean on them.

What if Phil left and no other man ever found her attractive again?

She was so pathetic, clinging to Phil as though he was the last man on earth. What if this was the rest of her life? What if she never enjoyed sex again? What if she kept on being jealous of her own daughter?

Missy heard Phil exit the washroom and walk toward their bedroom.

He stopped in front of Angel’s door.

Angel’s doorknob rattled, ever so slightly, but Missy heard it.

She held her breath. Don’t go in there.

He continued toward Missy’s room and the breath she’d been holding flew out of her. She rolled away so Phil would think she was sleeping.

He hadn’t gone into Angel’s room tonight, but he’d thought about it.

AFTER MIDNIGHT, ANGEL lay on her bed, watching the headlights of a car sweep across her ceiling.

She couldn’t sleep, not with her mind traveling a mile a minute with memories of Neil. She picked up a stone from the bedside table. Neil had given it to her because somehow time and the elements had shaped it into a heart.

He’d said it reminded him of her, of how time and life had shaped her into a truly good person.

Horse poop. It had done no such thing. As she rolled over, though, she clutched the stone.

The night lay still around her. She couldn’t breathe.

Someone stirred in Mama’s room. She knew what was coming. Or who.

Here we go again.

Phil’s footsteps whispered along the bare floor in the hallway.

He stopped at her door.

She flipped a sheet over herself and gripped it.

Come on in, Phil. I’d love to clock someone right now. Come in, buddy. Give me a reason to hit you.

He moved on, his footsteps entering the bathroom. She heard the door close.

When she’d come home on Christmas break, he’d played the same game every night.

A couple of minutes later, he retraced his steps, stopping outside Angel’s door long enough to turn the doorknob.

The door wasn’t locked. He could enter if he wanted to, and Angel would fight him tooth and nail.

After rotating a few degrees, the knob returned to its normal position and she heard Phil move on.

He was teasing her, letting her know that while he was in this house, he was the boss. He controlled everything.

Only because Mama let him. She owned it.

Angel uncurled her fingers, releasing the bedsheet she’d been gripping.

If Mama wasn’t bright enough to protect herself, Angel would have to do it for her.

At 1:00 a.m., she gave up trying to sleep. She sat on the bed and hung her head, tired of trying so hard to forget.

She dressed in the outfit she’d arrived in. Tomorrow, she’d unpack the saddlebags she’d left in the hallway.

Quietly, she stepped out of the house. These nights Angel haunted hallways and streets. After Neil’s death, she’d walked the many paths and trails of the campus every night, because to stay in bed with no distractions from thoughts of Neil and her own guilt in his death was murder.

In a strange way, it soothed her that Ordinary, Montana, never seemed to change. The street Missy had lived on for the past several years, in Harold’s house, was more upscale than what Angel had grown up in.

She rushed through the poorer part of town, where their old trailer still sat, and headed toward Main Street to see what the brouhaha about Chester’s was all about.

TIMM STOOD AT THE FRONT window of his apartment above the newspaper office trying to catch any hint of breeze to cool off.

He had a gift for insomnia. Probably did it better than anyone else he knew.

Glancing toward the end of Main Street, he watched several of Chester’s bikers drift out to their bikes, some of them none too steady on their feet.

The sheriff should be sitting out there every night, arresting them. But really, what could he do when he worked a twelve-hour shift every day and had only one deputy to take over for the night?

That issue needed to be addressed in Timm’s bid for mayor.

A movement from the other end of Main caught his eye. Angel Donovan. What the hell? He’d warned her that the town wasn’t the same one she’d grown up in now that Chester’s drew the worst clientele from the next county.

She always had been stubborn, though.

She was out there, in the dark, alone and he didn’t like it one bit.

She just had to pull old tricks and court trouble. She had a real talent for it.

He pulled on a shirt and jogged downstairs. He let himself out of the office, locking the door behind him.

From the recess of his door, he watched her. No need to tell her he was there. With a little luck, nothing would happen and she would wander home.

As Angel passed on the opposite side of the street, the bar’s door opened and a bunch of bikers stepped out.