Free The Comforts of Home by Jodi Thomas Page B

heard a familiar voice. A voice she’d never forget. Marty Winslow.
    Looking between the two overweight women in front of her, she watched as Marty presented a plan. He sat in his wheelchair, his black hair pul ed back, almost making him look like he’d cut it. He rattled off numbers while someone flipped charts behind him.
    “Who is that?” Ronel e whispered to her mother.
    “Some
    high-powered
    financial
    planner,”
    Dal as
    answered in her not-so-low voice. “Must not be too good.
    Don’t even look like he can afford a haircut.” One of the two heavyweights in front of them turned around and glared at Dal as.
    Dal as huffed at the woman as if to say Mind your own business. The woman had the good sense to turn back around.
    “Don’t pay him no mind, that man who obviously thinks he’s a genius.” Dal as pointed with her head toward Winslow. “Everybody knows those financial types are always tel ing other people how to spend their money and then committing suicide when they can’t handle their own. I bet it’l be hard for him to jump from a window with that wheelchair. He looks more like the kind to blow his brains out with a forty-five. Then what good wil they do him splattered al over the wal like so much ground liver.” Ronel e closed her eyes. She knew without looking that every person within five feet of them was staring at her mother with that drop-dead-lady look in their eyes.
    Thank goodness Hank Matheson stepped to the mic and said, “Let’s give Marty Winslow a round of applause for al the work he’s done. This looks like a plan we can make happen if we al head in the same direction.” One old man yel ed, “Yeah, if we live long enough,” but everyone else clapped.
    Ronel e slipped out the side door. She knew the minute the crowd broke someone would confront Dal as, and that was her mother’s favorite time. She’d debate the existence of hel with the devil himself.
    Standing in the cold, Ronel e tried to make herself invisible, and as usual it worked. When she’d been little she used to believe that if she didn’t see people, they couldn’t see her. She’d practice moving through stores without looking at anyone. Now, she pressed her shoulders against the wal and wished she were thin and flat-chested so she could mold against the building unseen.
    The two firemen huddled by a booth set up to sel chili didn’t notice her. One was Wil ie Davis. He was younger than Ronel e, but she knew him because he was the one who usual y came out to fix the streetlight by her house. Her mother always tried to give him a hard time about why he didn’t try to catch the criminal shooting out the light and not just keep coming by to fix it, but Wil ie Davis just smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am, you’re right.”
    This infuriated Dal as. People agreeing with her left little room for argument.
    The other fireman beside Davis was a big guy of about the same age: twenty, maybe twenty-one. He reminded her of the man she’d seen on the motorcycle outside Marty Winslow’s house, but he looked a little older and not quite as frightening.
    He might live here, but he seemed like an outsider, like her. When she glanced back at him, he caught her eye for a moment and gave a slight nod as if to say that he recognized someone who didn’t fit in. They might never talk, but Ronel e decided she would say hel o to him if he ever addressed her first.
    She couldn’t see any tattoos, but he might have them.
    Everyone under forty had them but Ronel e. Her mother told her once that if Ronel e ever got a tattoo she’d cut it off her skin with a potato peeler. The threat hadn’t frightened her because she’d never considered it seriously, but the knowledge that her mother was serious about the potato peeler did.
    Someone inside the fire station opened the bay door and people poured out. Bowls of chili were sold for three dol ars, and a long table had been set up for baked goods.
    Ronel e wasn’t much with numbers, but