I finished peeling the potatoes and started them boiling on the stove. Cleaning the scraps out of the sink, I peered out the little window. A soft breeze fluttered the gauzy curtain while I studied my next-door neighbor pulling a lawn mower out of the dilapidated, rusted shed behind his house.

He wasn’t from around here which made him an outsider, kind of like me. I’d never talked to him. I was too shy to approach a man, especially an attractive man close to my own age. He had moved into the old Williams house a couple of months earlier. The neighbors suspected he was single since they never saw a woman come and go. Trust me, if a woman had shown up, it would have been caught by the eyes of the Busybody Club. The elderly women of the Neighborhood Watch loved to snoop under the guise of being vigilant.

My neighbor wore a t-shirt and jeans. He leaned over to check the gas in the mower, giving me a perfect view of his posterior. A blush rushed to my face when I realized I’d been staring at it. I turned away and wiped stray potato peels from the kitchen counter with a dishrag as I heard the mower start.

“That infernal Yankee is interruptin’ my news!” Momma shouted from the other room. While the mower could be easily heard with all the windows open, it wasn’t even close to drowning out the news anchor’s voice.

“Momma, he is not a Yankee.” In Henryetta, being a Yankee was a serious offense, the term synonymous with liars, thieves, and murderers. And not necessarily in that order.

“Mildred said she heard he was from Missoura. That right there makes him a Yankee. Besides, it don’t matter where’s he’s from, he ain’t from around here.”

There lay the actual problem. He wasn’t from around here, which meant no one knew anything about his family. In this neck of the woods, the deeper the roots of your family tree, the higher your social esteem. My neighbor was a sapling transplanted into a prehistoric forest. It amazed me that he lasted this long.

“People move around nowadays, Momma.”

She harrumphed again. “Not in Henryetta they don’t.”

The sound of the television rose, competing with the buzz of the mower. I tried my best to ignore both while I finished making dinner. My mind wandered to my vision earlier. Violet and her children had been a great distraction but with the company of just myself, my thoughts presented themselves like unwelcome houseguests. I’d never seen something really bad before, and the fact that it was about me scared the stuffing out of me. But I also realized my visions didn’t always come true. I’d never met Daniel Crocker before today. Why on earth would he want to murder me? People ignored me, mocked me, and even gossiped about me, but murder me?

The best thing I could do was just forget about it.

Chapter Two

The annoying beep of my alarm broke the early morning silence. In a rare act of defiance, I didn't turn it off. I lay on my back, one arm draped over my head, and gazed at the water-stained ceiling. Dreams of bloody furniture, scruffy men, and an angry Momma had plagued my sleep, causing me to toss and turn so much the sheets knotted into a tangled mess. I would have loved nothing more than to sleep in, but Momma would have none of that. She considered sleeping past eight in the morning slothfulness, another one of the seven deadly sins. No excuses were acceptable, not even illness.

I was twenty-four years old and I let my momma tell me what time to get up every day. I felt hopelessly pathetic.

Momma shuffled down the hall. Let me have five minutes of peace, you old biddy. As soon as the words formed in my brain, I was contrite. What had gotten into me? Momma pounded on my bedroom door. “Rose Anne! Turn off that confounded alarm!”

It surprised me she didn’t fling the door wide open. I learned years ago there was no such thing as privacy in this house. Momma made it her business to know everything about everything.

I blindly threw my arm in the general direction of the alarm clock. Even after the shrilling stopped, I continued to lie on the bed and tried to the summon energy to face yet another day with Momma.

“Rose! Whatcha still doin’ in there? Get yourself outta bed.”

The morning soon filled with household chores, which really meant that I dusted, vacuumed, and scrubbed the bathroom while Momma bossed me around. As the minutes ticked on, my anger brewed and grew acrid, like a pot of coffee that sat too long. I worked all week while Momma watched television and gossiped with the neighbors. On my day off, I was nothing but her slave. I decided I would clean until lunchtime, then run off to the library. When I announced my plans to Momma, she protested with a vengeance.

“Rose, you have to make two apple pies for the Memorial Day church picnic tomorrow.”

“Momma,” I said, drawing out her name, worried my raging volcano of anger would burst out through the words. After a lifetime of keeping my anger stuffed like money under a mattress, I wasn’t ready to let it out now. “I can make them when I get back from the library.” I pulled out the leftover meatloaf to make sandwiches for lunch.

“The Henryetta Southern Baptist Church is countin’ on me to bring them pies tomorrow. I made a commitment and I intend to honor it. You’re makin’ them pies before you go.”

Momma sat in a chair at the kitchen table and waited for me to serve her lunch, as if I was her personal servant and she was the Queen of Sheba. Suddenly, just like a light switch turned from off to on, I’d had enough. I slammed my palm down, causing the dishes on the counter to rattle. Her head jerked up as I turned to face her. Anger made black spots dance before my eyes. “Well, Momma, if you made a commitment, then perhaps you should honor it and make the pies.” I practically shouted the last part, which from the look on Momma’s face, surprised her as much as it amazed me.