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If I was to count how many cars have been in and out of the parking lot, the number would just rest on one hand. This has been a frightfully boring stake-out, even if the thing I’m waiting for is a message from Blake⸺to which I have to wonder how he’ll do because he doesn’t have my number last time I checked⸺and not some disturbance of the peace.

I wonder briefly if Sheriff Stock has done stake-out missions before: it’s fairly likely since Ava and her people were about in the town. How would she tolerate this? I mean, it’d likely be if not pleasurable but enjoyable if there was some sort of company. I don’t know any of the other officers, I’ve never cared to, so I can’t pick who would be the best company out of them but I can out of the potential ones I have on the endeavour with me. It’s not Blake.

I’ve reclined the front seat, mainly because I’ve reached the point of boredom I’m actually tired. Also because it’s a bit conspicious for someone to be sitting inside a parked car at a sitdown restaurant.

Why did he even make me wait in the car in the first place? Why couldn’t I just come in with him right away? Part of me wonders if he’s hiding something and another part doesn’t actually care if he is.

“Christ!” I exclaim when my unmuted phone rings with a notification. Blake, it must be him.

I check the screen. The unknown number tells me it is Blake. And the message tells me that Ethan and his worry was right. This was a shit plan.

Come in. Rose knows.

Ethan didn’t imply I was risking my dignity when I agreed to this plan, but that’s all I can see I’ve lost as of right now.

I unlock the doors and slide out of the still reclined seat. I partially want to just take off down the road which we came, but I know better. I can’t run from this. I can’t really run at all, anyways.

One foot in front of the other, I begin my walk to the glass doors at the entrance to the building.

I’ve done the walk of shame a few times in my life: I was never a good presenter at school so I did my share of red-flushed walks back to my desk after a particularly rough presentation. I even once had to walk back into class after running out of the class to vomit in a trash can⸺I had a stomach flu but Mom said I should go⸺to sit back down at my desk because I knew Mom wouldn’t come to sign me out.

What I haven’t had to do, is come face to face with the person against whom I’d conspired to commit a crime. Let alone, someone who knows about it. This is so obviously different I wonder if remember how I handled the presentations and the vomit walks would help me in the slightest.

The bells above the door chime, letting every patron in the diner know someone has just entered, though there’s only three people which know why I’m so ghostly pale I must look gray. There’s only three people who know I almost committed a crime just outside their place of dinner.

I want to keep that number as low as possible.

The diner is small, I spot only two real servers on this side of the restaurant, and maybe one more behind the partial wall to the kitchen. I count the number of occupied tables, only eight. One of which is my party⸺terrible thing to call us⸺and it seems I’m the last to arrive.

Rosemary sits alone on one side of the booth her hair in the most unusual braid framing her face, and as usual she is put together to the point that it puts Amelia to shame. Though she’s not wearing heels or a dress, I can see her black slacks from where her legs peak out at the side of the table. Casual outfit to match her casual body language.

Too bad this wasn’t a casual encounter.

I have to sit on the outside edge of the booth seeing as Blake is pushed to the far side and Ethan sits towards the aisle. My stomach is heavy in my body as I approach them, and I worry I'm going to be sick. I think there's bile in my throat since I can barely breathe without feeling the gargling of it inside me.

Before I sit, I come to a conclusion about the difference between shame and embarrassment, because I’ve experienced my fair share of both. Embarrassment is an accident. Shame is on purpose. I’m embarrassed I got myself into this mess, but I’m ashamed I agreed to it.

As soon as my body lands on the seat, the ringing in my ear stops, the buzzing of my head is dulled, and the vomit in my mouth returns back down my throat with a burning sensation reminding me I haven’t eaten dinner, or lunch really and it was just stomach acid. I should eat when I get home.

Rosemary has what could be an endearing smile from a woman who’s glad to see me, but I know better. “Charlotte, you look very wonderful.”

“Thank you,” I say, really working hard to repress the immature response. My voice, despite measured, still has some semblance of normalcy that I didn’t think I could be capable of right now. “Though I don’t know how beneficial discussing our appearance will be right now.”

Blake sighs in a patronizing way. “No need to take that tone, Charlotte.” His teeth are too white when he smiles. “Be civil.”

Rosemary laughs with her lips in a line. “Civil,” she repeats, “I doubt you meant to be civil when you came with the intention of breaking into my car.”

Civility isn’t my specialty. I say, “It’s not breaking in if I have your keys.” I decide, She’s not as scary as I thought she would be, no as she sits right in front of me, there are decidedly things in this world and in my life that I fear more. And losing the opportunity to upstage, out-wit, and take down Rosemary off her high horse is something I fear a great deal right now. “Would you blame me?”

Bravery or foolishness, I have the upperhand in this conversation. She’s out numbered and out of her element. I’m right in it: greasy food Avan and I would get when Mom didn’t make dinner when we were in elementary school, standing up to a girl all talk like I would do to Ava’s friends, and this is our town. Not hers.

Her lips purse. “Breaking in or not, I’d still have reported you.” Rosemary looks to Blake, and I can finally breathe without having to look into her eyes. “You don’t want to be in a cell again, do you, Blake?”

The cafeteria those days ago was a reunion for these two cattle butting-heads, but their connection runs deeper than that because there is actual sincerity in Rosemary’s voice.

What else does she know?

“I want to help you, I really do,” Rosemary says.

“Why?” Ethan finally breaks Blake’s rule by asking Rosemary.

She looks at him. “Why do I want to help? Why does Blake? Why do you? The only one with honourable intentions is Charlotte.”

This is the first and I pray the last time I ever hear Ethan’s voice so cold. “You don’t get to talk to me about intentions.”

Rosemary smiles to herself, content in Ethan’s response.

Ethan shifts uncomfortably next to me and if I hadn’t looked at him, I worry he would have put his hand onto my leg to get my attention. The last thing I need to worry about right now is Ethan’s hands on me.

Even if I can’t read his mind, he knows I’m ‘plotting’ in my head. I can tell by the way he tilts his head and his eyes harden. Maybe if I had Ethan’s sense I’d be smart enough to keep my mouth shut and let Blake do the sweet talking. Let Ethan think us out of this. Let Rosemary destroy us with her own abilities that match Ethan and Blake’s combined. I don’t have sense, and I certainly am not smooth talking.

I make either the biggest gain in this search to find Ava, or the biggest set back when I ask, “Did you ever meet my sister.”

Rosemary is not a good liar. “A few times.”

“Really?” I tilt my head. “Because I remember Ava doing that same braid on me when we were young. It suits you better.” Blake might just kill me when we get out of here. Ethan might just lecture me. My upper body is so tense that the shaking of my head is robotic and twitch-like. “Don’t lie to me.”

I will get what you know about my sister out of you, Rosemary Rutherford, even if I have to pay a price.

“I thought you didn’t want me going to the gala,” I say, looking at the horrid dress Mom has hung on the ceiling hook for a planter. And yet you buy this.

The dress is blush pink, Amelia’s unofficial colour but still her ground, and if I didn’t know any better I’d say it was unintentional. It flares at the waist and creeping from the bottom are doilies so tacky I have to wonder if Mom is intentionally trying to make me look like a joke in front of the entire town. No, she doesn’t think it’s as terrible as I do, and that’s why she wants me to wear it.

“The colour is nice,” I remark, “I never thought of myself as a pink person but things change I guess.”

I stand with my arms crossed at least six feet from the outermost layer of tulle.

Mom approaches the dress and touches it with such adoration I might actually be jealous. “It’s a good colour. You wear too many dark mineral tones, dear. Pink is so much better.”

“Sure.”

She grabs the dress off the hook and passes it to me. “Here,” she says, “put it on. I want to see.”

I’ve done enough talking back tonight, I know that for sure. I agree to Mom’s request.

Rosemary decided she wanted to stay at the diner for a tea while Blake nearly dragged Ethan and I out by the ears after my unsolicited comments about her relationship with my sister.

“Did you at least get some of what you wanted?” I asked as I caught up to Blake in the parking lot.

“No, I got more,” Blake said not looking at me. “You got her on our side.”

Ethan grabs Blake’s shoulder. “Our side?”

“Charlotte deserves more help than you help than you can give.”

“I can help her however she needs. She came to me,” Ethan reminded Blake.

Blake kept calm at Ethan’s words. “You’re not going to find Ava if you don’t start thinking with your head.” It wasn’t really a warning, or a threat. Blake was advising Ethan.

Maybe I had made a mess of things.

Back in my kitchen, I shake my head and my thoughts of Blake and Ethan dissolve. “Okay,” I say grabbing the dress and turning on my heels towards the bathroom.

I rustle with the dress in the small main-floor bathroom in my house, and when I’m at least partially satisfied with my work on the corset back, I try to flatten my hair and catch my breath. I lean on the sink and look so far into my mirror, it’s my reflection that out of focus and the wall behind me that is.

My face has a thin layer of sweat across my forehead and the bridge of my nose. I can’t tell if it’s from the work it took to put on the dress or if it’s because I have had stress levels all of this evening on levels I haven’t experienced in a long time.

Yeah, stress. That’s why I still haven’t eaten. Or slept. Or talked to Amelia.

Yeah, it’s just stress.

Opening the door, I step out into the hallway and have to accept the fact that Mom, even with all her shortcomings, knows what it is to look ridiculous.

Mom opens her mouth to say something, but slams it shut and takes a big inhale through her nose. She shakes her head. “You don’t do it justice,” she tells me in such a way that it still manages to hurt me. “You look like the Smythe’s got their hands on you.”

They did, I want to say but I wouldn’t mean it the way she does. “I’ll get out of it.”

“Good. I can still get the money back. You’ll have to get your own dress then.”

I’m not planning on it. I hold my tongue and just nod my head in submission and retreat back to the washroom, hoping I can get the feeling of disappointing my mother another time off my body with the dress she bought for me.

When I’m dressed again, I look back into the mirror and see someone to be ashamed of looking back at me. Too bad I can’t take off the person I am and have Mom return it.

She helped make it, anyways.

I turn off the lights and prepare to face Mom one last time for tonight.