“You’re not interested?” Dennis asks.

My expression must be telling the whole story. I force a smile. “I’m delighted.”

He drums his chin, long fingers scuttling like a praying mantis across his skin. “There are only two of us here. You met Mrs. Roth at the front desk. She handles the administrative duties and types up the occasional piece. I write the articles and edit. We’re a small-town paper, and there’s no hierarchy here. Whoever’s free takes what comes in. Right now, it’s the school program.”

His newly kind tone warms me, resetting the whole interview, if that’s what you’d call this. “I’m thrilled, really. I was going a bit stir-crazy without work. Well, work outside of the house. This’ll give me a chance to see more of the town. To meet more of the folks.”

Dennis’s eyes grow hooded. “And for them to meet you. You’re the talk of Lilydale. We don’t get much new blood here.”

CHAPTER 9

I spend the afternoon immersing myself in Lilydale’s businesses, determined to meet the locals head-on. It’s the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever done, but if it’s necessary to do my new job, I’ll do it. At Tuck’s Cafe, I order banana cream pie and coffee and ask the waitress about her day. Inside Morrell’s Ace Hardware, I ask for paint recommendations to touch up my exterior house trim, something I have no intention of doing. I check in on our mail forwarding at the post office, fill out a form to update my driver’s license address at the county office.

Afterward, I stroll to Ben Franklin. I’ve stopped by there before, but this time I talk to the employees, feigning interest in the arts-and-crafts supplies they sell, selecting a new raspberry lipstick from their cosmetics department, exclaiming over their large display of penny candy behind the glass case, admiring the rack of enameled pins.

I’ve hated every moment of it, exposing myself like this, becoming visible and open to judgment. I feel not only naked but skinned. My mom was right about small towns, but here I am, trapped in one, dependent on the goodwill of these people to keep my new job.

The anxiety I feel causes me to do the most awful thing.

When the Ben Franklin clerk is called to the front counter, I slip a cloisonné pineapple brooch into my front pocket. It would cost $1.99 to buy. I have the money in my purse, and if anyone sees me, all the goodwill I’ve been building will be gone. Forever. I dip my hand in to stroke the brooch, running my thumb across the surface. I hate myself for stealing, but I need it. Just the thought of putting it back on the rack makes me feel like spiders are crawling across my scalp.

I’ll return it later, I tell myself.

That’s what I always tell myself.

The very first piece of jewelry I stole was at a five-and-dime where my mom worked, a store very much like the Lilydale Ben Franklin. We were living in San Diego, though not by the ocean, and I must have been old enough for school because I remember practicing cursive behind the five-and-dime counter and the smell of fat and waxy crayons when Mom would let me color.

I loved watching her as she worked. She was so pretty, so sure of herself. Men would stop at the counter to ask about perfume for a sister or jewelry for a mother. Mom would help them, or at least I thought she did, except they kept coming back. It didn’t take me long to figure out they were there for her. Some of them even screwed up the courage to ask her out, but she always turned them down.

“It’s just you and me, squirt, always,” she said once, turning to cup my chin after a particularly insistent man demanded she go to the movies with him.

It swelled my heart to hear her say that, to see the tears in her dark-brown eyes, tears that proved she loved me more than anything. I wanted to pay that back. I saw my opportunity the next week, when a female customer approached her.

“I need something truly special,” she said. “A beautiful piece of jewelry.”

The customer’s voice, ragged and wet, made me look up from the flappy-eared puppy I was coloring. Her face was swollen. Mom already had her hand on the woman’s. She was like that, my mom.

“Of course,” Mom said. Even I knew that the five-and-dime didn’t have anything real nice, but Mom didn’t say that, didn’t look twice at the woman’s shabby coat, just treated her like she was the most important person in the store. “What did you have in mind?”

“My husband left me,” the woman said, though Mom hadn’t asked. “Do you have anything gold?”

Mom squeezed the woman’s hand and then ducked under the counter. She used the key at her wrist to unlock a cabinet, then came out with a scarlet box. I sucked in my breath and held very still, worried that if they remembered I was there, they wouldn’t let me see what was inside the gorgeous velvet box.

Mom lifted the lid and took out a necklace. She held it up, a pea-size pearl dangling off a delicate gold chain. “Every woman should have pearls,” Mom said, “to remind ourselves that grit under pressure becomes beauty.”

The woman clapped her hand over her mouth, her tears flowing freely. She paid for the necklace, counting out part of her money in coins, and had Mom clasp it around her neck before she left the store.

When Mom took her cigarette break, I slid open that cabinet. She’d forgotten to lock it. Inside I found three more scarlet boxes. I took one for my mom because she deserved it, that’s what I told myself, but when I presented it to her the next morning, wrapped in the puppy page I’d colored, her face went slack.

“Joan, where’d you get this?”

I wanted to tell her that I took it because I loved her, because she never got nice things from anyone, because I didn’t want her ever to leave me. But I couldn’t utter a word.

She made me return the necklace and apologize to her boss for stealing it. I remember his beetled brows, his angry red mouth, but I don’t recall if he fired her or if she decided to move on her own. We were in a new city by the end of the week.

I kept stealing, right up until Mom died. It had always been little things that no one would miss, baubles that I could afford more often than not but that I was compelled to take. After Mom’s funeral, though, the shame of it became louder than the compulsion.

At least until today in the Ben Franklin.

If I’m caught with the cloisonné pineapple, I’ll say it was an accident.

When I pay for the raspberry lipstick, my hands so sweaty with guilt and exhilaration that I fumble the coins, I drop two dollars into the Lilydale Community Fundraiser jar, a penance for the brooch I can’t bear to pay for or return. Then I bumble to the next store, heart still fluttering, feeling watched, as if everyone knows what I’ve done. To calm myself, I wander the aisles of Wally’s as if I have nothing but time, selecting a package of chopped ham and another of bologna before filling my basket with American cheese slices, a rainbow variety of Jell-O, and a red-and-white checked box of Lipton Onion Soup Mix.

Everyone I speak with makes a point of telling me how Lilydale is the best place to live. The town council gathered donations to build the nursing home so no elderly people would be on the street, according to the stocker at Wally’s. There’s money put aside to cover health-care costs or missed work should any citizen need it, says the cashier. I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t hearing the stories from the mouths of locals.