Free Home Another Way by Christa Parrish

out of a straitjacket. Self-motivated, I was not. I doubted, however, there was a hiring frenzy in town.
    I didn’t mind working. I’d put in my share of menial labor, the kind usually reserved for high school graduates and single mothers. I even busked in college. Many of the Juilliard music majors did, including the trust-fund bunch—something about suffering for one’s art. Basically, it was an easy way to earn a few dollars for beer while putting in the practice hours. I clearly wouldn’t be standing on any street corners here. Anyway, I doubted a single person in Jonah could tell the difference between a Dvorák symphony and the dueling Deliverance banjos.
    Well, maybe Jack could.
    Jack. I thought that he might come by Sunday morning, attempting to goad me into a pew. He didn’t, and that was the problem with nice guys—they actually did what people asked. I would have much preferred his showing up on my porch, and my dismissing him with a “Didn’t you listen to a word I said? I don’t want to be bothered.” At least then I would know he was thinking of me.
    Like I was thinking of him.
    Since the dance, Jack had impinged on my thoughts, mostly blurred recollections I swiftly quashed. Occasionally, though, my mind wandered down unhealthy paths that included two cats, joint checking accounts, and a picket fence.
    “Enough, enough, enough,” I growled, stabbing the key into the truck ignition and twisting.
    The engine sputtered, gasped, and then turned over. Gas first.
    The station was a few miles south of the inn and offered a full-service pump. It cost nineteen cents more per gallon, but who cared? My father was paying the tab.
    A stocky young man with piceous eyes plodded to the truck. He reminded me of a garden slug, thick and slow. I rolled down my window and handed him the credit card. “Fill it up.”
    He did. The name patch on his jacket read Dominic.
    Now, where was I going to find a job?
    Sunlight flared through the windshield, blinding me. I flipped down the visor and a small white card fluttered to my lap. I turned it over. Doc’s card. Well, it was as good a place to start as any.
    I found the office on Main Street. A receptionist—the tart, midnight-haired woman from the dance—paged through a celebrity news magazine at the front desk.
    “Can I help you?” she asked.
    “Is Doc White in?”
    Her eyes narrowed slightly. Maybe a few years older than me, her lips gleamed with deep claret lipstick. “You don’t have an appointment.”
    “No, but could you please tell him I’m here?”
    “You can wait. He’s busy now,” she said, turning back to her reading.
    I sat, shuffling through the dated magazines and tabloids, finding one with headlines announcing proof positive aliens had landed on earth. Probably here. That would explain things.
    Doc came out of a back room. “Patty, I thought I heard—Oh, why didn’t you tell me Sarah was here?”
    “She doesn’t have an appointment,” the receptionist said.
    “Sarah, come on back,” Doc said, handing Patty some envelopes. “Please go mail these.”
    “Okay, I will.”
    “Now.”
    Patty pulled on a yellow parka and trudged out the door.
    “Loud,” I said.
    “You’re telling me.” Doc led me into an examination room.
    “I meant her coat.”
    “I didn’t,” he said. “That girl has the biggest mouth in town, and the biggest ears. Worse than her mother, and that’s difficult to believe, if you know Ima-Louise Saltzman.”
    “I had the pleasure of meeting her last week, at the diner,”
    I said. “I don’t think she liked me.”
    “You were sitting with Jack Watson. That would do it. Can’t help but overhear; my ears are big, too. They already have Patty’s wedding dress picked out, you know. She’s been trying to get her Jezebel red fingernails into the reverend for years.”
    I laughed. “That’s not very nice.”
    “I’m not very nice. Anyway, I’m not making it up. Her nail polish is called Jezebel Red. I watch