Free Hopper House (The Jenkins Cycle Book 3) by John L. Monk Page B

washing linen. As the day dragged on, I stopped trying to help her and watched TV—Man of the Year—but she’d still ask me to do things.
    “Can you get me the green bucket from the pump room?” she said.
    I got her the bucket.
    “Can you help me move this couch so I can get behind it?”
    I did that too.
    Lunchtime came and I checked the refrigerator. I’d half-feared a terrible stench from rotting food, but it was cold and completely empty.
    I visited the back porch and smiled at the view over a wide and overgrown field. Rose was sweeping leaves and other debris off the side and humming quietly to herself.
    “Sorry to intrude on your good housekeeping,” I said.
    She stopped humming. “You’re not gonna ask me more questions, are you? I don’t know anything else.”
    “Do you know what we’re supposed to eat?”
    If I thought that would stop her, it didn’t. She continued sweeping, then started humming again.
    I waited.
    When she finished, she leaned the broom against the wall and said, “There’s a general store about two miles down. They close at six, so you have plenty of time. Probably a bad idea for me to go.”
    “They’re just as likely to be looking for me as you,” I said.
    Rose smiled. “So you’ll have to be extra careful, won’t you?”
    I sighed, went back inside, and got the car keys.
    The store was exactly two miles down the road, just as she’d said. I parked next to a beat up blue Chevy truck and went inside. The place only had one shopping cart, but I was the only shopper.
    Quickly, I went up and down the aisles grabbing enough food to last three weeks: loaves of bread, boxes of pastries, stacks of prepackaged cold cuts, condiments, several packs of bacon, three cartons of eggs, boxes of spaghetti and jars of sauce, cookies and milk, pancake mix with syrup and butter, all the pork chops in the little freezer they had, and a big package of Kool-Aid in two delicious flavors.
    There was a middle-aged black woman at the register who stared at me like she’d never seen a fugitive from justice before—which is to say she didn’t recognize me. Later on, after the news, or tomorrow after looking in the paper, who could say?
    “You’re sure doing some shopping now, ain’t you?” she said, ringing up each item.
    “Sure am,” I said, suppressing my inner Jenkins so as not to leave a favorable or strange or obnoxious impression behind.
    “Must get hungry, big as you are.”
    “At least several times a day.”
    She cast me an appraising glance, still ringing up purchases. “You staying up at the rental house?”
    “The uh, what?”
    “The big white house,” she said, nodding her head back the way I’d come.
    “What? Oh … uh, nope. Just driving through.”
    “I can always tell when someone’s staying there,” she said. “Some kind of club, I figure, but I mind my business. You not as rude as some of them others. That’ll be three hundred twenty-six dollars and thirty cents.”
    I blinked, trying to keep up with her. Then I got out my wallet.
    “Just driving through.”
    “Picking up a snack,” she said with a smirk.
    I made a noncommittal sound and waited while she bagged everything.
    “You come again, now.”
    “Just driving through,” I said again.
    Way to keep a low profile, Dan.
    When I got back to the house, Rose was gone.
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    U pon opening the pantry to put away the non-perishable groceries, I found a box on the floor with a sign taped to it reading, Donations.
    What kind of rental house had a donation box? In an empty pantry? Maybe it was for charity. Odd for a rental business, what with people getting sued for every little thing these days. One time, I’d gone begging at a fast food restaurant on one of my less fortunate rides, only to get turned away. Later that night, one of the workers came out to dump the day’s uneaten food. I’d crept from the shadows and asked if I could have some, and the worker said he wasn’t allowed. Then he’d padlocked the