Anywhere but Here Read online

  She began getting cash back at the grocery store and stashing it in the bag with the thrift store clothing. By getting a little at a time, Mike wouldn’t notice. She didn’t want to cash checks at the bank or do anything that would look out of the ordinary.

  She’d never been one to post a lot of things on social media, but she would occasionally answer posts. She stopped that. She didn’t want to close the account. That would seem to obvious.

  She bought a refurbished laptop with cash and established a new email address under the name Stella Brown. She only used the laptop at the local Starbucks and other hot spots, never from the office or home.

  She began molding that new identity. She bought a short black wig and some glasses, put on some darker lipstick and took a selfie with the burner phone. She created a new Facebook page with the photo, making sure it was not a clear picture. When she settled in a new place, she’d start friending a few people to make the page look legitimate.

  It was only a week before she planned to leave. She purchased a newspaper and perused the ads for used vehicles and went to Starbucks with her laptop to check Craigslist. She made a phone call using her burner phone, then hopped on a bus into Charlotte.

  When the man signed over the pink slip on a 2001 Subaru, she wrote the name Stella Brown on the Release of Liability and gave a made-up address. It was probably the only thing that was actually illegal that she had done, but she had to have a vehicle, and she wasn’t going to take her own car. She parked the Subaru on a residential street at the edge of town. Every couple of days, she’d walk to where the car was parked and move it so it wouldn’t be ticketed.

  It was finally Monday, D Day on her calendar. Mike had left early and said he was probably going to be late coming home from work. By then she would be miles away and, with any luck, the police wouldn’t be looking for her for at least twenty-four hours. It was her regular day off at the real estate office, but she hadn't quit her job. She couldn't make it look like it was planned in any way.

  She put her purse on the chair in the bedroom where she always kept it. She laid her phone on the nightstand. She put on a pair of jeans and a red sweater, then took the bag of thrift store clothes and money from the closet. She went through Mike’s desk drawer and found the evidence lying under some files and stuffed it in her bag. She didn’t take it all and tried to leave the other items and files in the drawer looking untouched. She looked around and picked up the photo of her and Mike on their honeymoon.

  “What a fool you were,” she said to herself.

  It had been a whirlwind romance. He was, she thought, everything she’d ever wanted. After being single for more than sixteen years, she thought she’d found the love of her life. They married three months after they met, and everything changed.

  She set the photo back down and then walked out the door, leaving it unlocked. When she reached the sidewalk, she called to Mrs. Ferguson who was watering her tulips.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Ferguson,” she said, waving.

  “Mornin’, Etta. Where are you off to this fine mornin’?” the old woman asked.

  “Just going for a walk. Have a good day,” she said.

  It only served her purpose to be noticed doing something as normal as taking a walk. However, this walk was a long one, three miles to Dillon Street where the Subaru was waiting, gassed up and ready to go.

  She headed south and stopped at a gas station and convenience store where she parked on the side of the building and went inside. The place was busy. That was perfect. No one would notice her. She headed for the restroom.

  She changed her clothes and put on the painter pants, baggy sweatshirt and Doc Martens. She dropped her skinny jeans and red sweater and black flats into the trash can, then wadded up paper towels and threw them in on top. She tucked her blond hair up under the straw hat, put on the sunglasses and walked out, unnoticed.

  In the next town, she stopped at a CVS drugstore and bought a box of black hair color and a tube of red lipstick. She drove further and pulled off at an Arby’s on the highway, ordered chicken tenders and fries and went into the restroom. There she applied the hair color, wrapped her head in the plastic cap, put on the straw hat again, tossed the food in the trash and walked out. Within the next half hour, she had stopped in yet another convenience store, rinsed out her hair and cut it very short. She applied the lipstick, put the hat in the trash, tousled her hair, and Stella Brown walked out.

  Chapter 3

  Watching herself television brought back the memory of the first time she’d seen herself on the news. It was the day she arrived in Fort Landers. As she crossed a bridge over the harbor, she noticed several businesses and restaurants. She needed to eat, though she hadn’t really been hungry since leaving Cleveland Falls. She pulled into the parking lot of a place called Landers Wharf and got out. It had begun to rain, so she hurried up to the door and went inside.

  There was a horseshoe bar in a lounge that opened into a dining room. She asked the bartender if she could order lunch at the bar and she sat down. There was no one else in the bar until two men walked in and sat a few seats away from her.

  A television that hung from the ceiling over the bar was broadcasting a news program. She looked up at the screen and saw Darren Sykes, the Chief of Police of Cleveland Falls, standing in City Hall with Sheriff Wally Homer to one side of him and Mike on the other. Mike looked like someone who was worried about his wife. He was a good actor. She knew Mike was only worried about what she knew.

  She couldn’t hear what was being said but the closed caption below described how she had, according to a neighbor, said she was just going for a walk and never came back. She imagined his reaction when he came home to find her gone. He’d probably turned the house upside down looking for clues. But he wouldn’t find any. She had made sure of that.

  She had held her breath when the bartender looked up just as her picture appeared on the television screen. It was her driver’s license photo. She glanced at the two men sitting at the bar, but they weren’t paying any attention. She cast her eyes down and put her hand on her forehead. Someone else sat down at the bar and the bartender walked over to wait on him. Then the news switched to weather.

  It made her sick to her stomach. All the deception, the lies, the planning… she had become someone she didn’t recognize, not only in looks, but also in the way she thought. Had he taught her that?

  She relaxed a little remembering that she now looked nothing like Etta Summers with her short black hair, brown contact lenses and the phony glasses that she wore. Etta would never wear red lipstick or thick black eyeliner. Etta wouldn’t have been caught dead dressing in the baggy clothes that Stella Brown wore. She no longer felt like Etta, inside or out.

  Salty stood in front of her and barked, pulling her from the memory. She reached for the remote control and turned off the television. He jumped up on the sofa next to her and whined.

  “Did Hank let you up on the sofa?”

  The dog looked at her, panting and wagging his shaggy nub of a tail.

  “It’s time for your walk, isn’t it boy?”

  She looked at the lunch that she had hardly touched and the half cup of tea that she’d already reheated twice. She wasn’t hungry anyway. Over the past few months, she’d lost so much weight that everything hung on her. She had struggled to keep her weight down her entire life. Now she was struggling to gain a pound. She picked up the tray and put it in the kitchen. A pea coat that she’d picked up at a Salvation Army somewhere along the way hung from a hook near the back door. She put on the coat and a blue knit cap and took her umbrella from the corner where it had left a puddle from Salty’s last walk.

  The dog had taught her his routine, and it was comforting to her to have somewhat of a schedule, even it if was Salty’s schedule. However, she couldn’t hang around the cottage all day every day. It had been two weeks. There were things she now had to think about, not the least of which was finding work.

  With Salty’s
leash in one hand and holding the umbrella with the other, she and her new companion walked out onto the back porch, around the house and toward the sidewalk. As they crossed in front of Iva Mae’s house, she saw the woman pull back her curtain and look out. She had so far been able to avoid talking to her nosey neighbor, if only because the weather had been too nasty for Iva Mae to be outside.

  There was a small park at the top of the road where it intersected with the two-lane highway. She always took Salty there and then unhooked his leash to let him wander a while. He never went far. She brushed melting snow from a bench and sat down to wait for the dog. The wind had stopped blowing, and now the snow was covering the ground and trees in ice crystals.

  She stared out past the harbor. There seemed to be no separation between ocean and sky. It was all different shades of grey, some more purple, some blue and some green, but all grey as it met the blackness of the clouds. On one side of the harbor an old drydocked paddle wheeler called the River Gypsy had been turned into a hotel. It was camouflaged against the snowy bluff on that side of the harbor—white on white with only a faint yellow glow coming from some of the windows and a bit of red showing from the wheel at the stern. The fishing boats, some of which she had seen racing in ahead of the storm, were now all snug in their berths. Only a few people could be seen in their yellow and green slickers on the dock. Some were securing their moorings, some heading for Landers Wharf or Tully’s Pub to warm the cockles of their chilled hearts with food and spirits.

  She shivered as she noticed a flashing blue light at the corner of the park. It appeared someone had gotten pulled over by the sheriff. The sight of any law enforcement made her nervous, so she stood up and called Salty. When the dog saw the officer walking back to his car, Salty began barking and running toward him.

  “Salty, no, come!” she yelled, but he kept running.

  By the time she caught up to him, the officer was bent down scratching Salty’s ears.

  “Salty, come,” she said.

  The sheriff stood up and looked at her as she clipped the leash to Salty’s collar.

  “I’m sorry. Salty, come on, let’s go,” she said, keeping her head down.

  As she started to turn away, the officer said, “I was wondering about Salty after old Hank died. You adopted him?”

  She smiled slightly and said, “He pretty much adopted me. He was at the cottage when I moved in.”

  “So, you’re renting Hank’s old place. New in town then?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  She could barely see his face. The fur around his hat came down to the tops of his eyes, and the earflaps were snug against his cheeks. She only noticed a heavy mustache that was collecting ice crystals.

  He narrowed his eyes and reached out a gloved hand. “Dan Baker. I’m the sheriff in this little burg.”

  She hesitated and then shook his hand. It was warm and she realized how cold her fingers were. She’d neglected to put on any gloves.

  She nodded and realized he was waiting. “Uh, Stella,” she said.

  The sheriff continued to hold onto her hand. “Stella?”

  “Yeah, Stella Brown.”

  He let go of her hand and tilted his head when he asked. “You okay?”

  Stop acting like you’re trying to hide something, she thought to herself.

  She sniffed and said, “Yeah, sorry. It’s just cold. We better get back.”

  “Want me to drive you back?”

  She shook her head and said, “No thanks. It’s only two blocks. Salty needs to walk.”

  “Okay then. Stella. Welcome to Fort Landers. Give us a call if you need anything. Salty, you take care of your new owner.”

  She nodded and thanked him as she turned and hurriedly walked away, but she felt him watching her. Finally, she heard his car door slam.

  She stopped for a moment at the general store on the corner. There were two dispensers for newspapers. One was empty and one held the Fort Landers FreeBee, an advertiser. She took one out and continued down the hill to the cottage.

  She and Salty walked up the driveway past the Subaru, toward the back of the house. As she turned the corner, she looked back at the street where she saw Officer Dan Baker slowly passing the cottage toward the harbor. She hurried up the steps and inside.

  Lighting a fire in the wood stove in the kitchen, she heated water in the copper kettle on the stove to make a pot of tea. Her hands were shaking after her encounter with the sheriff. She knew it was silly. There would be no reason for Dan Baker to be suspicious of her. Still, she reached under the sink where she had found a bottle of Jim Beam, apparently left by old Hank. She took her tea and the pint bottle of whiskey to the plank table in the dining room and sat down to read the Freebie.

  Scanning the pages, there was the typical advertisements for local businesses, want ads, livestock and pets, used cars and boats. On the very back page there was one column of work wanted ads and four listings for jobs. She circled two of them. One was for a convenience store clerk, and the other was for a bartender at Tully’s Pub.

  She looked at the bottle of Jim Beam. How many of those had she poured over the years? When she got a divorce at twenty-six, she got a job as a customer service representative for a manufacturing company. Having been left with the house payment and a small child to raise, she soon got a second part-time job as a bartender. That soon became her fulltime job. Until she met Mike, that’s what she had done for fourteen years. In fact, that’s where she’d met him.

  What she did for a living was fine with him until they married. Then he said it wasn’t appropriate for the wife of the City Manager to be working in a bar. That was just one of the demands he’d made of her in those first revealing months of their marriage. He had wanted to change everything about her, so much so that she wondered why he’d married her in the first place.

  She crossed out the ad for the convenience store clerk, put her pea coat back on and drove down to the harbor to Tully’s Pub.

  Chapter 4

  Etta cautiously drove down the steep, snow-covered street toward the harbor. She stiffly gripped the steering wheel, and her foot hovered over the brake. She hadn’t driven in snow much, but Stella would not have been timid. Stella would have been confident and fearless. This was the persona she’d created for her new self, so she leaned back in the seat and tried to relax her shoulders. Stella may have looked self-assured, but the butterflies in Etta’s stomach wouldn’t go away.

  At the bottom of the hill, she made a wrong turn. As the snow became heavier, she was having a hard time seeing through the windshield. She found herself passing through a row of run-down cabins and tin-can trailers. She assumed they were inhabited by seasonal fishermen and dockworkers. Waves of heat arose from the vents and smoke billowed from a few chimneys. The residents inside were no doubt lingering near any available warmth to attack the cold that couldn’t help but seep through the thin walls.

  “I should have waited until tomorrow,” she said to herself as she rubbed the inside of the windshield with the sleeve of her coat. However, no one knew what cards Mother Nature would deal the next day, and she needed a job now.

  The street opened up into what was known as Trident Harbor, and she was relieved to know where she was once again.

  The harbor supported a once-thriving fishing industry. The commercial fleet had decreased by half and was taken up by charter fishing and sightseeing boats. She passed by Landers Wharf, her fortunate stop for lunch two weeks earlier. With its homey coastal décor of fishnets, cheap nautical images and buoys, it was a backdrop for hearty fish stew, thick rich chowder and fried fish and chips—a favorite of the locals.

  Next to the Wharf was a gift shop decked out to trap tourists with their ocean themed trinkets. An upscale restaurant, also called Trident, was next. With valet parking under cobalt blue awnings and large aquariums full of live Maine lobster, it catered to a much higher clientele.

  Tully’s Pub was the last in the harbor in terms of class and loca
tion. Past the other restaurants, fish market, fisheries and trinket shops, it reached out to the fishermen entering the harbor through the inlet. At the end of the pier, with its weathered white clapboard and green neon shamrock sign flashing on and off in the window, it needed no other introduction.

  She got out of the car and trudged over the slippery, snow-covered wooden planks of the pier, breathing in confidence with each icy breath. She pushed on the ship’s wheel to open the heavy door and was immediately greeted with the familiar smell of cigarettes and stale beer. It was a smell she’d gotten used to over the years, but she’d been away from it for a long time. Now it attacked her senses and made her eyes water.

  She heard the sharp clacking of phenolic resin coming from a game of pool being played somewhere out of sight. Laughter echoed from a table of four burley men who were playing cards. One man was hunched over and ruminating into his whiskey at the bar as a woman leaned in close to him whispering seduction and desperation. Another lone man watched the bartender—a handsome and buxom redhead, perhaps in her fifties, with too much hair and makeup, and clothes that may have been attractive on someone twenty years younger and thirty pounds thinner. Etta stood inside the door staring at this smoke-screened illusion of bar life. She’d known it well, if only from the professional side of the bar.

  With her first step hesitant and unsure, she proceeded with false self-confidence toward the bar. The redhead looked up from the three-comp sink where she was washing glasses and dried her hands with a bar towel.

  As the woman approached her, Etta noticed her arresting steel grey eyes that seemed to look deep in her soul. It was unnerving, but as she smiled, the crow’s feet around those eyes deepened and enveloped her in genuine warmth.