The knock on her door pulled her out of her funk, and when she pulled the door open for Michelle, she was nearly pummeled to the floor of her cottage as Michelle tackled her for a hug. “Wow. What the hell’d I do to deserve that?”

“You agreed to go out. It’s been way too long.”

“Yeah, well, prison tends to put a crimp in one’s social life.” Bailey spoke through Michelle’s hair that was in her face as she held her in a tight embrace. When Michelle finally released her death grip, she pulled back and beamed at Bailey. “What if we see people we know? I mean, no one wants to see me. And frankly, I don’t want the reminders of just how much everyone in the world hates me except for you.”

“I’ll be there, and I’ll kick anyone’s ass who’s mean to you. We’re going to have some fun. To hell with anyone who wants to stand in our way.” Michelle was still beaming at her, and it was almost easy for Bailey to think for a moment that perhaps she could have a good time.

Michelle was wearing a dress. Of course she was, and she looked damned cute too. She was a good six inches taller than Bailey, and she was slim and lithe. God bless Michelle and her good genes. Suddenly Bailey was rethinking her T-shirt and old tattered jeans, but the second she said something, Michelle stopped her. “Oh, no you don’t. You look fabulous in that perfectly casual sorta way you pull off better than anyone else in the world. I remember that T-shirt. You got it when Jess’ parents took us to the football game. We all got one. Can’t believe you still have it!”

“Well, my clothes have been in storage for a while.” She contemplated for a second before opening her mouth again. “I saw him . . . Darren. Few times now. Can’t seem to stop running into him. ’Course, I tracked him down to yell at him in a parking lot one of those times. . .” She trailed off as she caught the wide-eyed shock on Michelle’s face.

“You . . . well . . . I don’t even know what to say to that.” She was stunned for a moment. “I mean, of course you would run into him at some point. His parents too, I ’spose, but what did he say? What did he . . . do? Was he . . . I don’t know. Civil?”

“He hates me. I mean . . . of course he does.” She shrugged her shoulders. “He got me fired. Not sure if it was intentional or not, but he certainly has no problem with the fact I’m jobless. Sometimes I think I was crazy to come back here. I mean, my lawyer had to actually do lawyerly stuff just to get me paroled back to Savoy from out of state. What the hell was I thinking, and what the hell did I expect? That I could avoid him forever?”

“Stop. This is your home as much as his. Your mom is here, and now that your dad’s gone, she needs you. You have as much right as anyone to be here.”

“Well, I think you and Mom are the only ones who actually believe that. Someone vandalized my bike. My bike! That’s . . . I mean . . . it’s a bike, for fuck sake!” Michelle’s expression was sad, and perhaps a bit stunned. A bike, after all . . .

When they finally made it to the parade, and she caught sight of her nemesis across the street from her almost instantly, she thought certain God was tutting at her in disappointment. Darren did not see her, and as the marching band moved between them, she took the opportunity to watch him. His hatred for her didn’t extend to the rest of the world in any way. He smiled as different people greeted him with a hand clapped on his shoulder. It was too small a community for people not to know the prodigal son who’d come home to such a noble pursuit as ER doctor in their hospital. The town loved him, and he greeted everyone with a friendly smile, but she saw that smile fade quickly when no one was looking, just to be reinvigorated when the next person called his name.

She remembered that smile, and she missed it more than she cared to admit. It was a hard thing being hated by him. She knew she was staring, but Michelle beside her was too busy watching the procession of band members, cheerleaders, firemen, and the like to notice that Bailey was off in a different world. Bailey imagined what life had been before. She let herself feel the warmth and comfort of a world where so many people didn’t hate her. She let herself feel the flutter of nerves as Darren flashed his million-dollar smile at her. None of it was real, but it had been, and she escaped to those memories as she watched him shake hands, wave at people, hug a little old woman who greeted him warmly.

He returned his attention to the procession shortly thereafter, and when his eyes moved across the street and caught on Bailey, who was still staring at him like a buffoon, his face dropped. His expression turned to a glare, and he returned her stare venomously. Bailey’s cheeks burned, but she didn’t look away. She lifted her hand tentatively before she could stop herself, and the moment he took in her gesture, he turned, pushed his way through the crowd behind him, and disappeared with one final glare over his shoulder.

“Michelle, can we go?” Michelle looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Bailey didn’t want to get into the Darren discussion here, so she pleaded with her eyes. Michelle watched her for a moment, gauging just how much resistance she wanted to put up. With a sigh and a shrug of her shoulders, Michelle nodded, and they left.

Michelle was one of Bailey’s oldest friends. After high school, she’d ended up in Kansas City for college, and she’d returned to Savoy with her MBA a couple years ago to help her father run his furniture store. It was the only furniture store in Savoy, so being successful and profitable had never been a problem for them, but her father was nearing retirement, and he’d be handing over the reins soon enough. Bailey’s small cottage was furnished in damaged pieces from their store, and she’d spent an entire evening using furniture scratch cover-up to make it look decent. She’d been high as a kite by the time she finished thanks to the fact she forgot to open a window, but from a distance, her furnishings were quite nice for her small, moss-covered cottage in the woods.

When Michelle suggested a bar instead, Bailey inwardly groaned, but she had made Michelle miss the parade, so she ended up nodding, wondering just how much worse her afternoon of being a normal twenty-seven-year-old could get. She found out quickly it could definitely get worse.

He picked up his glare right where he’d left off at the parade the moment she and Michelle walked through the doors to the dingy old bar just on the edge of town. It was a watering hole type of joint, and Darren was playing a round of pool on the old retro seventies pool table. She watched as his lips mouthed, “What the fuck” at seeing her, and his expression was cold and pissed. Bailey recognized the two guys he was shooting pool with, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember their names. Didn’t really matter. The moment they followed Darren’s glare to Bailey, their brows arched in that “oh, shit” sorta way.

Michelle sat at the end of the bar, only just taking in Darren and the other two guys at the pool table. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath before standing and walking over to them. Bailey stayed planted on her barstool, refusing to even look up. There was just no escaping him in this town, and he seemed to be everywhere. Bailey glanced up once to see Michelle speaking with the group of three, but only the two nameless men were actually looking at her. Darren’s eyes were glued to Bailey.

“Hey, let’s get a booth in the back.” Michelle was suddenly standing by Bailey’s side, looking expectantly at her. Darren had returned to his game, though his attention seemed to be constantly pulled toward her as though he was just as powerless to look away from her as she was to look away from him.

“Or we could just leave, Michelle.” Bailey knew she’d never go for that one, but she couldn’t help but hope.

“Come on. Just pretend he doesn’t exist, okay? For one night. You won’t even have to look at him in the back room. Please?”

“You think this is about my wanting to be away from him, but it’s not. Do you think for one second he wants me here? ’Cause I’m tellin’ ya, he doesn’t.”

“He didn’t say a thing to me when I was over there—”

“That’s ’cause he was busy glaring at me! That’s what he does. He hates me; he glares at me; he destroys my job; he glares at me some more.”

“Well, he can’t glare at you if you’re sittin’ in a booth in the back room. ’Sides, this place is gonna fill up after the parade gets over. You won’t be able to find him even if you want to in a while.”

She was right. Soon there was a flood of parade goers walking through the doors, decked out in their green—their ridiculous plastic green hats, green beads, green just about anything. But even the green people of Savoy weren’t enough to save her. In fact, they ended up being the catalyst for her misery.

“Aren’t you that girl?” Bailey looked up to the woman standing beside the booth she and Michelle were hiding in.

“Umm . . . I don’t—”

“You are! You’re her!” The sneer on her face meant she wasn’t asking if she was that girl who once broke the Savoy high school record when she swam the 200 freestyle. Nor was she asking if she was the girl who won the literary award for creative writing when she was only a sophomore in high school. She was asking a far more loaded question than that. Bailey had the odd reaction of looking behind her at the back of the booth she was sitting in—as though perhaps hopping over the back and bolting might be a good option.

Instead, she turned back slowly to the woman standing with her hand on her hip and the other holding a green beer in her hand. The woman was waiting, swaying slightly in her drunken state, for a response Bailey was having a hard time coming up with.

“She’s the girl who’s just trying to have a pleasant drink with her friend on St. Patrick’s Day, just like everyone else.” Michelle challenged the woman beside them with her cold, dead stare. Michelle had always been good at holding her ground. Perhaps it was years of working in the store with her dad from the time she was old enough to run a cash register. Her glare meant business. Her glare meant, “Get the fuck away from my friend or deal with me instead.” Her glare meant, “I’m going to kick your ass if you open your smug mouth again.” Bailey loved her glare at the moment.

“Whatever.” The woman staggered off.

“You can’t pay attention to that bullshit, Bay.”

“It’s not bullshit. She has every right to hate me.”

“The hell she does. She doesn’t know you.”

Bailey just stared at Michelle. There were times she actually felt like Michelle did. She felt she deserved forgiveness; she felt she deserved a life—a real one that didn’t leave her incessantly followed around by ghosts. There were those times, but they were few and far between. Most of the time, Bailey felt like she deserved everything she got, and she was going to deal with it until the day she died because she’d earned this. That was her most-of-the-time perspective, and it really didn’t matter that her only remaining friend in the world didn’t agree.

When the group the drunk girl had returned to started eyeing her venomously, it didn’t take long for Michelle to return the glare with her own dose of lethal eye venom. It also didn’t take long for Bailey to excuse herself from the table to escape the attention.

“I’ll be fine, Michelle. I just need some air.” She didn’t give Michelle any time to respond before she stood and walked to the back door that led onto a wooden deck that wrapped from the back of the bar around the side. Like most other places in the Ozarks, the trees grew right up to the railing surrounding the deck, and Bailey stood alone in the near-darkness listening to the sounds of the woods around her. She hated this place—almost as much as she loved it.

Her mother really was the only reason she was here anymore. Her father had passed away nearly two years before while Bailey was sitting in a prison cell. Her mother dealt with the loss on her own because her daughter had been too stupid to keep her ass out of trouble. And now her mother was alone, trying to eke out a living in a town that had taken its toll on her almost as much as it did on Bailey. Her father had died of lung cancer after years of secretly smoking outside back doors and side doors of whatever non-smoking establishment he happened to be at. Nobody smoked anymore; it could kill ya, didn’t ya know? But that was Bailey’s fault too.

Her father had all but conquered that addiction years ago when Bailey was still in high school. That was until his daughter wound up in jail. Funny how such things tended to shit on everyone around you, including your own father, who ended up smoking himself into an appointment with death far sooner than what he deserved.