Where You Least Expect by Lydia Rowan Read Free Book Online

hand.
    “Come on. I ain’t got all day. Now, Verna!” he said sharply.
    She reached into her pocket and gave him her key ring. He removed the restaurant’s key, and the key to his and her mother’s house and then tossed the others at her. She caught them without thinking, shock at what had just transpired leaving her frozen. He turned to leave, and she finally found her voice.
    “But, Daddy…” she said, her voice strained.
    “Uh-uh. Don’t ‘Daddy’ me. You wanna act grown, be grown and find someplace else to work. And I want you off my property in the next ten minutes, or I’m calling the sheriff.”
    With that, he stomped out of the storeroom, slamming the door behind him.
    Long moments passed as Verna tried to understand what had just happened.
    “Five minutes,” her father shouted, banging on the door.
    That spurred her to action.
    She left the storeroom and grabbed her stuff before exiting out of the back door, feeling like a criminal even though she’d done nothing wrong. Her father had always been a hothead, but this was extreme, even for him, so the best thing to do was wait until he calmed down. With nowhere else to go, she got into her car and headed toward home, and her cell phone rang before she’d made it five hundred yards.
    “Hello, Mother,” she said.
    “Oh, Verna, what did you do to upset your father?” she asked.
    That her mother had decided she was to blame was hurtful but not remotely surprising.
    “Nothing. He’s piss—mad about something. You know he fired me, right?”
    “Oh, he didn’t, did he?”
    “He did.”
    Verna briefly considered asking her mother to talk to him and try to get him to change his mind, but she knew that would be fruitless and frustrating, so she saved her breath. Vernon’s word was law at Love’s Cafeteria and at home, and her mother wouldn’t go against it, or even try to get him to consider a different perspective. She never had before, and Verna knew she never would.
    “Well, dear. I know you’ll work it out.”
    It was just the sort of unhelpful, unreassuring reassurance that she’d come to expect from her mother, a harsh reminder, no matter how unintended, that Verna didn’t have a soft place to land, at least not emotionally.
    “Yeah. Well, I gotta go.”
    She had to end the call before she lost it.
    “Okay, Verna. Take care.”
    Take care.
    Her mother would have shown more affection for a door-to-door salesman. It was that thought that had Verna breaking down in tears.

Chapter Five
    “Happy birthday…”
    The sounds of a slightly slurred woman’s voice rang across the backyard and to the balcony where Joe sat, unwinding from a long day of doing nothing at all. Instantly irritated, he stood and walked around the side of his balcony and looked into Quinn’s—Verna’s—backyard. His gaze zeroed in on the shadowed figure that he recognized as Verna sprawled out on one of the brightly colored deck chairs.
    “Verna, what’s all that racket?” he yelled gruffly.
    She turned her head and raised an arm abruptly, tittering a little giggle when some of the liquid in her glass spilled over the rim and landed in her lap.
    “Joe!” she screamed. “Wish me a happy birthday!”
    She was drunk. What the fuck?
    He spun on his heel and headed toward the opposite side of his deck.
    “Well, fine, keep your fuckin’ happy birthday. I ain’t want it no way!” she yelled.
    He couldn’t stop the chuckle that sprang up at her words as he walked down the deck stairs and quickly scaled the ten-foot privacy fence that separated their yards. Then he walked up her stairs and only stopped when he stood in front of her, waiting for her to notice him, though she seemed content to hum under her breath and wipe at the wet spot on her shirt with a paper napkin.
    “That’s going to leave lint,” he finally said, and she screamed, dropping the glass that she held, and glanced around wildly before settling her gaze on him.
    “Motherfucker! Dammit, Joe! I