Anger rolled through me, but I choked it down. Carol knew full well I couldn't show up to Dorianna's real estate office without the dress.
Well, who needed toilet paper and cat food? Apparently, not the Willowstones.
It wasn't like I could expect Dorianna to repay me. She never did. It was just another kind of outcast tax my sisters and I owed any time we dealt with Garden Grove witches.
Gritting my teeth, I pulled out my debit card and slid it through the machine.
After the transaction was completed, Carol put the receipt on the counter. She sniffed, looking down her nose at me.
"Good-bye," she said. What she really meant was "get your trashy self out of my store," which she'd actually said to me. Several times. Lucky for me, the guy behind me was enough of an audience to mute her sharp tongue.
I grabbed the receipt and stuffed it into my purse. Then I took the dress, carefully laying it over my arm.
When I turned around, I saw a pair of empathetic blue eyes meet mine. I felt like someone punched me in the gut. I gasped, moving back as though a blow had actually landed.
Mystery Man grabbed my wrist, keeping me on my feet. I couldn't look away from his eyes. They were blue. Like Arctic ice. And they should've been cold, right? He looked so imposing. So out of my league. Yet my skin burned where his fingers touched my flesh. And that cold gaze? Warm and welcoming. A tropical ocean. Not an iceberg.
I felt like I knew this person, though I'd never seen his face in my life. He was ridiculously handsome. At least ... five or six inches over six feet tall. Dressed in a tailored suit with a dark-blue silk tie. And he was ridiculously handsome. What was he? A daytime soap opera actor? A Xiaohongshu model? A fallen angel?
Garden Grove had less than a thousand people in it, and we pretty much all knew each other. So either he was a stranger passing through or he was visiting a relative. My gaze dropped to the garbage bag he held and realized he was dropping off clothes to be cleaned. So maybe he was new in town?
What did it matter? He'd overheard every mean word Carol had spouted at me. Mortification heated my cheeks once more, and I could no longer hold his gaze.
"Excuse me," I muttered. I wheeled around him and left the dry cleaners as quickly as I could.
I picked up Dorianna's Rolex at Hanover's Watch and Jewelry Repair. Mike Hanover, former best friend of Douglas Jones, handled the transaction with slightly less scorn than Carol. At least he hadn't called me an untrustworthy alcoholic panhandler.
With Dorianna's Rolex secured in my purse and her dress draped over my arm, it was time for my third stop on the humiliation train: Narrow's General Store.
I bought tampons, Vaseline, and condoms. I wasn't an idiot. I knew Dorianna's errands were designed to embarrass me. But I didn't care how much crow I had to eat if it meant getting the blessings of the coven to enter their ranks.
All I to do to was think about the disappointed expressions of my sisters as they talked about not getting into the college my mother and grandmother had both attended. That was plenty of motivation.
I could do this.
I had to do this.
Alexander Narrow was a lot like his name—tall and thin. I'd graduated with him from Garden Grove High School. He'd gotten a degree in Business Magic. Recently, he'd taken over the store from his parents, who'd decided to retire early and putter around on their small farm east of Garden Grove.
Alex didn't carry any hatred toward me, but he knew better than to be friendly. He scanned the items, told me the total, and took payment. Honestly, his indifference was a breath of fresh air compared to the way everyone else treated me.
I had one last task before heading to the opposite side of the town square so I could hand over my spoils to Her Spiteful Highness at Miller & Miller Realty.
Joe's Java.
I dreaded entering the coffee shop even more than I had the dry cleaners.
Joe Banton had divorced his wife, Marie, so he could be with Mom. I still shuddered when I thought about their relationship.
Mom wanted what she wanted—and it didn't matter who paid the cost. My mother went through men the way some of us went through a box of chocolates.
But Joe… I guess he thought he was different. He thought he could hold onto her. He soon learned he could no more contain my mother than someone trying to hug a tornado.
Goddess help anyone who thought they could change the stripes of a tiger.
Mom had discarded him for Douglas Jones. Yep. Threw Joe away like a worn-out pair of sneakers.
I think Joe had loved my mother the same way my mother had loved Doug. And Doug had tossed aside Mom with the identical cavalier attitude and cold heart Mom displayed to Joe when she'd showed him the door.
At least that had been the assumption based on, as Sheriff Cooper told me, facts in evidence. I didn't know what had happened between Mom and Doug—honestly, no one did. But people felt the need to fill in the gaps. The story of rejection and revenge fit too well not to be true.
Joe hadn't forgiven Mom's rejection even after she committed murder-suicide with black magic. I'm sorry to say that with my red hair and green eyes, I looked a lot like my mother. I think the physical reminder of the woman who'd broken his heart was painful, and that was the real reason he treated me worse than everybody else.
I huffed out a breath and gripped the handle as I tried to gather my courage to step into Joe's Java. This place reminded me the most of what I'd lost. Of the life I could have again if I played my cards right.
Everything rode on the coven's approval tonight. That fact tasted like vinegar, but so what? My sisters and I had spent years being either ignored or reviled. Watching my sisters suffer had been the worst part.
"You going in, ma--er, miss?"