Free Cauchemar by Alexandra Grigorescu Page B

unapologetic eyes. A dark mole sullied the woman’s tanned face, and her lips cracked through pink lipstick.
    Sarah Anne snorted. “You haven’t done hers yet.”
    â€œI don’t serve her kind,” the cashier said simply.
    â€œWhat would it hurt?” Hannah asked the woman, hating her doleful voice.
    The cashier stepped back from the register. Hannah thought she saw an expression of regret flash across the woman’s face. But then she jutted her chin toward the door, as if Hannah were some dumb animal undeserving of speech.
    Hannah set down her empty basket and moved toward the door, even as Sarah Anne called her back. Christobelle’s words rang in her head, telling her to keep strong and close herself off, but all she felt was shame.
    Sarah Anne caught up to her in the parking lot. “What was that?” she asked, her own groceries abandoned inside.
    â€œThey don’t want me here,” Hannah said, blinking back tears. “They want me in the swamp, with the reptiles. Where they think I belong.”
    Sarah Anne moved to stand in front of her. “You should tell the manager. They have no right to treat you like this.”
    Hannah stared bitterly out at the street. “You don’t understand what it’s like, being turned away anywhere I go. You can’t know how much they hate me.”
    She felt paralyzed by the knowledge that others might turn on her even in the brief walk back to Callum’s apartment. She was beginning to understand Mae’s fierce protectiveness and how necessary their waterside exile had been. In that moment, she ached for the easy life that Mae had constructed for her.
    â€œI don’t care who your family is, money is money. Money is blind.”
    â€œNot my money. They don’t want anything from me. Everything I touch is tainted.”
    She thought of Callum and the unburdened simplicity of his life before she’d come into it. How long before the townspeople found out who was sleeping in his bed? Or worse, maybe they already knew. Maybe they’d already confronted him, a wall of thick-armed men encircling him on the docks, his own small form eclipsed by their menace. There was nothing more terrifying than precarious happiness.
    â€œHannah, that’s not true.” Sarah Anne touched her shoulder. Hannah flinched away from the woman’s hand.
    â€œNow you’re tainted, too,” Hannah said, aiming for levity, but her voice came out dry and heavy. “I should go.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Sarah Anne said. “I know you must be going through a lot. Why don’t you come over? Let me make you dinner one night, and we can catch up.”
    â€œSure,” Hannah replied, but she was already waving as she turned away. She’d imagined seeing Sarah Anne again many times over the years, and had rehearsed long apologies for abandoning her that night so long ago. But now she’d had two chances, and fallen short of contrition on both occasions. Maybe the finest gift she had to offer was to shut herself off.
    So distracted was she by her thoughts that she bumped shoulders with the old woman standing in the middle of the street. “Sorry,” Hannah mumbled. She caught a glimpse of white hair framing milky brown eyes as she passed, and when she looked over her shoulder, the woman was still there, watching her go. She noticed the varicose veins streaking the woman’s legs beneath the hem of her pale blue shift dress. Hannah’s shoes slapped the concrete as she walked away, and she thought of a hunted animal, moving inelegantly through the brush.

    When Callum was gone, Hannah was restless. Her new life was different from her previous uncomplicated fascination with books, herbs, and fetching simple accents for Mae’s dishes. It had been a small life, but comfortable in its simplicity and reassuring for seeming so secure. Now her future stretched in front of her like a chasm,