Beauty and the Black Sheep. Jessica Bird

getting older and less attractive.

      At the age of thirty-one, she felt more like fifty-one. She’d been working seven days a week for a decade and couldn’t remember when she’d last had her hair done or bought a new piece of clothing, other than work uniforms. Her fingernails were chewed to the quick, her hands shook all the time and her diet consisted of coffee, breadbasket leftovers and more coffee.

      “Frankie?”

      Her sister’s voice was subdued as it came through the door and Frankie had to struggle not to scream back, Don’t ask me if I’m okay!

      “Are you okay?”

      She squeezed her eye lids closed. “I’m fine, Joy.”

      There was a long silence. She imagined her sister leaning into the door, one pale hand against the wood, a worried expression on her perfectly beautiful, Pre-Raphaelite face.

      “Joy, where’s Grand-Em?” Frankie knew that asking about their grandmother, Emma, would channel the concern somewhere else.

      “She’s reading the telephone book.”

      Good. That was known to quiet the dementia at least for a little while.

      In the pause that followed, Frankie stood up and started to grab hunks of plaster off the floor and the desk.

      “Ah, Frankie?”

      “Yes?”

      The reply was so quiet, she stopped cleaning up and strained to hear Joy’s voice through the wood panels. “Speak up, for God’s sakes, I can’t hear you.”

      “Ah, Chuck called.”

      Frankie pitched some plaster into the trash can, nearly knocking the thing over from the force.

      “Don’t tell me he’s going to be late again. This is Friday of the Fourth of July weekend.” Which meant with the way things had gone last season, they would probably have a couple of people come for dinner from town. With two sets of guests in the house, there could be nine or ten expecting food. The number was nothing like it used to be, but those people needed to be fed.

      Joy’s voice became muffled again so Frankie threw open the door. “What?”

      Her sister took a quick step back, cornflower blue eyes stretching wide as Frankie brushed a wet length of brown hair out of her face.

      “Don’t say one word, Joy, unless it’s about the message from Chuck. Not one word.”

      Her sister started talking fast and Frankie got the gist. Chuck and his girlfriend Melissa. Getting married. Moving to Las Vegas. Not coming in, tonight or ever.

      Frankie sagged against the doorjamb, feeling her wet clothes and her apprehension cling to her like a second skin. When Joy reached out, Frankie shrugged off the concern and snapped to attention.

      “Okay, first, I’m going to go take a shower and then here’s what we’re going do.”

      Lucille’s life ended not with a whimper but a bang on a back road somewhere in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.

      Going seventy miles an hour, the 1987 SAAB 9000 blew a gasket and that was game over. With a burst of noise as loud as a gunshot, she relinquished her usefulness with protest and wheezed to a stop.

      Nate Walker, her first and only owner, let out a curse. When he tried the key, he wasn’t surprised when the response came from the starter, not the engine.

      “Aww, Lucy honey. Don’t be like this.” He caressed the steering wheel but knew damn well that begging wasn’t going to fix whatever had made that kind of noise.

      It was probably hydraulic lift time.

      Opening the door, he got out and stretched. He’d been driving for four hours straight, heading from New York City to Montreal, but this was hardly the kind of break he had in mind. Eyeing the road, which was just a little asphalt and some yellow paint away from being a footpath, he figured his first move had to be getting Lucille out of the way of traffic.

      Not that he had to rush. He’d seen one other car in the last twenty minutes. Looking around, there was only thick forest, more of the thin road and the gathering darkness. Silence pressed in on him.

      Putting Lucille in Neutral, he braced his shoulder against the doorjamb and pushed, steering through the window with his right hand. When she was safely on the rough, scratchy grass at the side of the road, he popped the hood, got out his flashlight and gave her a look-see. As Lucille had aged, he’d gained a proficiency in auto repair, but a quick inspection told him he might be out of his league. There was smoke coming out of her and a hissing noise that suggested she was leaking something.

      He shut the hood and leaned back against it, looking up at the sky.

      Night was coming on fast, and being far to the north it was cool even in July. He didn’t know how much walking it was going to take to reach the next town so he figured he better be prepared for a hike. Going around to the front seat, he threw on his battered leather jacket and collected some provisions. Stuffing the bottle of water he’d been nursing and the remnants of the turkey grinder he’d had for lunch into his backpack, he reckoned he had enough to last him.

      Before locking up the car, he grabbed his knife roll. The heavy leather bundle, which was tied tightly with a strap, felt good in his hand. Inside were six pristine chef’s knives made of carbon and stainless steel, and taking them with him was second nature. A chef’s knives were never to be left unattended, even locked in a car on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

      The rest of his crap he couldn’t care less about, not that there was a lot of it. He had some clothes, all of them old, most of them repaired in one manner or another. Had two pairs of boots, also old and repaired. And he had Lucille. Who was old, and repaired but now not so usable.

      His knives, however, were not only new, they were state of the art. And they were worth more than Lucille.

      Which probably wasn’t saying much anymore.

      Kissing his palm, he laid it on Lucille’s still warm hood and started out.

      His boots made a heavy noise as they hit the asphalt and he settled the backpack comfortably on one shoulder. While walking along, he looked up at the sky. The stars were incredibly bright, particularly one dead center above him. The thing was flickering like a broken light and he started to think of it as a companion.

      Mailboxes soon sprouted at the side of the road. Mailboxes and imposing stone gates. He figured he was getting close to one of the old-fashioned resort areas where the Victorian wealthy had once escaped the heat of New York and Philadelphia in the days before air-conditioning. The rich still came to the Adirondacks, of course, but now it was strictly for the area’s rugged beauty rather than from a lack of Freon in their life.

      He titled his head back to the sky.

      Man, that star was alive. Maybe it wasn’t even a star. Maybe it was a satellite, although then it would be moving—

      Nate felt his boot tip and the next thing he knew he was ass over elbow, falling into a ditch. On his way to the ground, he made himself go limp as he prepared for a rough landing. Fortunately, the earth was soft, but a shooting pain in his lower leg told him he wasn’t going to walk away from the fall without a limp.

      He lay on his side for a minute. He couldn’t see his star anymore from the new vantage point, although he had a good shot at the ravine he’d almost rolled into. He sat up, brushed some leaves off his jacket and felt okay. When he got to his feet and tried to put weight on his left leg, however, his ankle let out a howl of protest.

      Great. Out in the middle of nowhere. Car dead at the side of the road. And a mission-critical body part that was not passive aggressive in its opinions.

      Nate grit his teeth and started walking. He knew he wasn’t going to make it farther than a quarter mile on the ankle. And that was if he had crutches.

      The