“You got a problem, lady?”
Darcy glares bullets into the man. He stands two heads taller than her, his chest barrel-thick.
“I don’t like it when a grown man follows my underage daughter.”
He steps closer. She smells the sour perfume of beer and fast food on his breath.
“No harm in looking.”
His grin displays a jaw full of crooked teeth pockmarked by decay.
“Sir, I don’t want any trouble. She’s only fourteen. Leave my daughter alone and walk away. Please.”
Is it Darcy’s imagination, or does he smack his lips when she mentions her daughter’s age? He nods at the license plate on the Prius.
“North Carolina. That where you’re from? Because you talk like a New Yorker.”
“Where I’m from is hardly your business.”
“She don’t look like no fourteen-year-old I know. They make all the girls that sweet up north?”
He’s on top of her now, his work boots brushing against the toes of her sneakers. She searches for an ally in the parking lot, someone to diffuse the situation if it spins out of control. The boy pushing the carts vanishes inside the store, while an elderly woman struggles with a grocery bag on the far side of the lot.
“I’m leaving now. Stay away from my daughter.”
When Darcy spins around, the man snatches her by the arm.
“You fucking bitch—”
His mouth hangs open when she pulls the gun. It’s a Glock-22, the same model she carried with the FBI, and the muzzle points at his ample belly.
“Don’t touch me.”
His arm drops to his side as he takes a step backward. There’s fear in his eyes, but something primordial lurks behind the sneer. This is a man who wouldn’t think twice about raping Darcy and burying her in a deep, dark hole nobody would come across.
“No need to start a war. Put the gun away before you hurt yourself, lady. Someone like you is more likely to shoot a hole in her foot than defend herself.”
“I know what I’m doing. Now walk back to your vehicle like we just finished a nice conversation, and we won’t have any trouble.”
His body tenses, and for a terrifying moment she’s sure he’ll call her bluff and lunge at Darcy. Beat her to death in the parking lot and leave her for the vultures to pick at.
Then he walks backward, his eyes fixed on her.
“I’ll be seeing you around.”
He flashes his wicked grin and climbs into the SUV.
Darcy’s body trembles as she hurries back to the car, praying Jennifer didn’t see the altercation. She holsters the gun and conceals it beneath her jacket before opening the door. In the cold silence of the car, Jennifer stares at Darcy.
“What did he say? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Don’t worry about him. There wasn’t any trouble. He’ll leave us alone now.”
Jennifer begins to ask another question, but Darcy’s white-knuckle grasp of the steering wheel dissuades her daughter from prying. Darcy cuts across the lot and heads toward Main Street, one eye on the mirror until she’s sure the red SUV isn’t trailing them.
Scarlet River looks like a hundred different small southern villages. A white-pillared mansion with a steep staircase holds the advisory council for historic preservation. A Baptist church, also white, juts its steeple above the trees at the corner of Main and Standish.
“Hunter and Mr. Hensel finished at the store and are heading to Laurie’s,” Jennifer says after checking her messages. “Should I tell them something about that man?”
Darcy casts a worried glance at the mirrors and doesn’t see anyone following.
“No need to worry everyone. He’s gone now.”
“He was a creep.”
Darcy nods. If the man had ogled her from across the store, she would have brushed it off and ignored him. But threats against her daughter push Darcy to a higher level of anxiety.
Turning down Main Street, Darcy studies the ma and pa hardware, clothing, and office supply stores. Scarlet River appears locked in a time warp. Even the hairstyles and clothes look thirty years out of date, the little town clinging to the past. An old-fashioned ice cream parlor gleams on the corner. Darcy pulls into the lot and nestles the Prius between two 4x4 trucks. Jennifer gives her mother a cockeyed glance.
“Ice cream for lunch?”
“Why not?” Darcy says with a shrug. “You aren’t going vegan on me, are you?”
“Mom, it’s the twenty-first century. They make vegan ice cream these days.”
Darcy narrows her eyes at the sea-blue storefront.
“Fat chance you’ll find vegan ice cream in this town.”
Inside the parlor, Darcy stands in line behind a mother with two young boys clinging to each hand. Jennifer wanders to the wall and reads the posters. All the local bands advertising upcoming shows seem to be flavors of country or western. Ted is selling his Subaru for two thousand dollars, and there’s an apartment for rent on Harrington Avenue. Jennifer stops on one poster, fastened at the top and bottom by tacks. She removes the bottom tack and angles the poster toward the window light. It’s a photograph of a missing girl. Jennifer pulls the picture off the wall.
“Leave it there,” Darcy says.
Jennifer scowls and refastens the tack.
They sit at the rear of the parlor under a rotating fan that blows the sweet scents around the room. Darcy digs into a banana split sundae while Jennifer nurses a dripping waffle cone of pumpkin praline. Before she eats too much, Jennifer snaps a photograph of the ice cream cone.
“Nice picture, but don’t think about uploading that to Instagram.”
Jennifer tosses the phone on the table.
“I might as well not have a phone. It’s not like you let me use it for anything. Just take it.”
“If you insist.”
Darcy reaches for the phone. Jennifer snatches it away and stuffs it into her pocket.
“This is ridiculous. Why can’t I talk to my friends?”
“We’ve been over this.”
Darcy’s rules are ironclad. No social media posting, and no phone calls or texts outside of family.
“You’ve been over this. We haven’t discussed anything, because nobody has a say but you.”
Darcy switches the subject before Jennifer erupts. She’s already drawn eyes from the customers waiting on their orders. The ice cream works its magic. Jennifer can’t stay angry.
Darcy brought Jennifer here to talk, but she’s content to leave well enough alone while her daughter indulges in this rare treat. When was the last time the family went out for dinner or did something spontaneous and grabbed dessert? As far as Darcy can tell, Jennifer didn’t see her pull the gun and has no idea how close she’d come to a violent confrontation. For several minutes, Darcy watches the entryway, convinced the bearded man will shove the front door open and block their escape. But he doesn’t come.
The mother of the two boys sits cross-legged at the next table, checking her phone while her children lick chocolate ice cream cones. An elderly couple with two straws share a raspberry milkshake. The other customers take their orders to go.
The tension rolls off Jennifer’s shoulders by the time they finish their ice cream, and when the conversation percolates, she doesn’t complain about the friends she misses back in North Carolina or why they’re in a backwoods town with spotty cell service and no shoe outlets. Jennifer never knew Tyler, the father who died when she was a year old, and she’s shouldered the burden of having a mother whose morbid claim to fame is surviving a stab wound from the most feared serial killer of the last decade. Like Hunter, Jennifer raised herself when Mom struggled with anti-anxiety pill addiction and developed a paralyzing fear of the dark. Jennifer is a fighter, a survivor. A little rough around the edges, but Darcy is damn proud of her daughter.