When the Leaves Stop Falling

Chapter 1

As discontent as she was to see the dreary, frigid rain that seemed to never end this week, Edith Meyers was damn proud of herself. She was opening her diner tomorrow, and there was much satisfaction in that. Months of building, and planning, and designing were finally at a close. Sneering, she willed the carpenters to a hell dimension for all the headache.

Her only and secret wish was that her beloved late husband could still be around to see it. She rarely let her emotions to the surface, and that was just how she wanted it. Few people were privy to the softer side, the side she often saw as a weakness. Oh, how she missed him, though. If he were here, he wouldn't have let her drive fifty miles out of their small town in the driving rain to pick out a jukebox no one would use. He would make some of his famous hot chocolate, wrap a blanket around her shoulders, and read to her from his little green book of poetry.

But Zebb Meyers was laid in the ground six months ago, with his little green book and tears from the whole town for a good man lost. He left his faithful wife of twenty-five years more money than either of them thought they had when he passed. And so, she built her diner, complete with a bell on the door and a picture of him by the register.

Edith glanced at the dashboard of her aging truck when it blinked a check engine light again for the third time this week. Ignoring the mild annoyance and rolling her eyes, she pushed in the cigarette lighter with a click and snagged a Salem 100 from her bag next to her. Pulling over onto the shoulder, she decided to wait the torrent out. What good would all her hard work do if she was dead in the ground?

The wipers on full speed were issuing a rhythmic sound and scarcely clearing away the sheets of water pounding the truck and highway before her. Droplets bounced off the asphalt and clay as if running from the earth. She couldn't recall the last time Arizona had ever seen a downpour like this, outside of the wet season. The fog made visibility near nothing, as she carefully lit her cigarette.

That's when she noticed something...odd. Blowing out a puff of smoke, she squinted her eyes through the windshield and rain.

By all appearances, it looked like a wounded animal, lying on the side of the highway. Grunting to herself, not knowing who to be angrier with, the stupid animal for bolting into the road, or the insensitive humans for running the poor creature down. Unsure why, she was drawn to it. Not usually one to give into curiosity, she watched the lump with interest. What the hell else was there to do? Fleetingly, she shifted her eyes around to check for signs of disturbance and found none.

So, she sat there, on the side of the road, in her old truck, for what felt like hours before she even blinked. Hell. It was just road kill, right? But it lay forty feet or less from her bumper, sending chills of a not so good variety up her spine the longer she stared. Her grip on the steering wheel tightened, turning her pudgy knuckles white.

Then it moved.

A gasp caught in her throat. Smoke filled her lungs, choking her while her heart pounded inside her chest in rapid succession. Road kill doesn't move. If she was positive of anything it was that. Of course, this one barely had. Squinting her eyes again as if her sight would improve doing so, she wondered if it was a coyote or dog.

It moved again.

Without a second thought, Edith jumped from her truck into the bitter downpour, leaving her cigarette to sizzle and die on the wet pavement. Pulling her well worn flannel higher around her neck, she bent down next to the body on shaking knees.

A...person lay crumpled on their side, involuntarily trembling. There was no bag near them, just a pair of tattered jeans and a white t-shirt covering their thin body, now soaked from the torrent. Waist length stringy blonde hair was matted against a pale face in disarray.

Edith, her hands usually steady and sure, gently rolled them on their back with little effort, pushing away the hair to get a better look.

"Oh, dear Lord!"

A girl. She was young, too young to be lying in a ditch in the middle of nowhere. Bruises covered her arms and what could be seen of her chest. A series of tiny cuts lacerated her face with small amounts of blood seeping from them and disappearing from the rain. Her lips, slightly opened, were puckered and blue tinted. Dark, deep shadows bruised under long pale lashes.

Edith stood and glanced around, gravel crunching under her boots. There was nothing for miles but desert. They were between small towns that seemed to plague this part of the country. No one to help. She bent down and hazardly placed her hands on the girl, checking for other signs of injury, panic setting in. The girl didn't wince or flinch when Edith dragged her hands over her arms and legs.

How long had she been out here? What had happened? Hell. Didn't matter. Something had to be done now. The girl's breathing was shallow and Edith knew, with uncertain dread, that there wasn't much time. The girl was freezing, probably starving, and possibly injured worse than Edith could assess.

The youngster quickly opened her eyes, only once, and Edith found stark blue glaring back at her with confusion. The color of a storm when its clouds roll in. Blue battling with gray. Edith held the girl's face in her frozen hands, mesmerized by those young, frightened eyes. A flash of sensation, too powerful to name, shifted the atmosphere, pushing the breath from Edith's lungs. It was as if the girl was seeing right inside Edith's head, dissecting thoughts and stroking emotion. Before Edith could say anything, the girl closed her eyes and went limp.

Not knowing what else to do, except she had to get the girl out of here, Edith ran to the passenger's side of the truck, pushing away empty cans and paper bags to grab a blanket.

Racing back, she carefully wrapped the girl in the blanket and, without much effort, carried her to the truck. She didn't stir at all. Not even a moan. There wasn't a hospital within sixty miles. Edith was soaked to the bone. She could only imagine how logged the girl was. Cranking the heat, she drove like a bat out of hell, heading for home. She'd call their town doc, Richard, and have him get a look at the girl.

Then they'd decide what to do.

TEN YEARS LATER

Zebb's Diner, off of I-40, near the Arizona border, reeked of grease and stale coffee. It was the kind of place drifters came to only when passing through on their way out of town, or if they were unfortunate enough to exist in the small town it centered. It was supported by men who ate too much fried food. Men who would sit for endless hours playing poker or checkers and arguing about the weather to pass time. Seemed as if the place was stuck in a continuous time loop of absence.

Courtney Morgan glanced around at the pale green walls stained with time. The pink and white tiled floor needed mopping again. She'd do that in awhile. The coffee maker was gurgling, indicating the brew was almost finished. She smiled weakly. Somehow this existence was her heaven.

She glared yet again at the group of men near the window she'd been serving everyday since she'd come here, broke and in need of a place to crash. She tried not to think about how it wasn't much different than where she ran away from, other than the people. But then again, people were all the same no matter where one went.

She flinched when one of the men slammed his fist down, making the booth they'd squeezed into squeak a little more. Old habits died hard. One day she'd quit being afraid of her own shadow.

Knowing their blood pressure didn't need any more caffeine, Courtney filled their coffee cups silently. One of them muttered a, "thanks darlin'," hardly noticing her, and continued to growl at his companions as one laid out a winning hand of Five Card Stud.

She returned to her corner of the diner, waiting to fill the cups again. Did they ever pay attention that their mugs were always full, or would they ever acknowledge who filled them?

She didn't know whether it was a blessing or a curse no one ever seemed to notice her, except the few people who'd helped her so long ago. Where she'd come from, she'd tried hard to go unnoticed or there were consequences. Consequences that left permanent scars on her arms and various other hidden places.

She couldn't help but wish for something to make her heart flutter or snag her interest. In that far off place in the corner of her mind, a place she rarely acknowledged even existed, she hoped for...more.

Shaking her head, Courtney willed the past from her brain. It did no good dredging it up. She was here now. Mrs. Meyers, she thought fondly, found her wandering almost ten years ago and now she was safe.

Courtney turned her head and smiled as the old woman balled out, without glancing up from one of her hopelessly romantic novels, "Max, you smack my booth one more time and I'll smack you."

"Yeah, yeah," the guy muttered and downed his coffee.

Mrs. Meyers owned Zebb's Diner and seemingly never left. She was a round-faced noble woman, who had a knack for telling things how it was. She could yell at customers, serve up breakfast, and take an order all at once. Her dark brown hair was receding to gray, and was kept in a tidy bun, more for convenience sake than beauty.

Courtney didn't ever call Edith Meyers by her first name, and thought with a smirk, that no one else seemed to either. Townsfolk called her Mrs. Meyers, as if she was an old schoolmarm demanding respect.

"And what, my dear, are you smiling at?" Edith's voice came out harsh and ragged, the consequence from years of smoking.

Courtney sighed gently. "Nothing." She dropped her chin in her palm and leaned against the ivory colored, coffee stained counter. Before this town found her she had no idea how to talk to people or behave. She'd learned, in those long first sixteen years of her life, to be who her father expected her to be and nothing more. Never anything more.

And somehow it was never enough.

She didn't have to watch what she said or how she said it anymore. There was no one to yell at how unkempt the house was, though she may have spent all day cleaning it. No one to scream vulgarities at how ugly or scrawny she was. There was no one to curse her for seeing things, calling her witch for the events that weren't there or had yet to happen. And no one to beat her down, when she had not an ounce of strength left in her to shield the blows.

Some wounds took too long to heal. It took almost ten years to breathe easily again and, most importantly, not to have to look over her shoulder.

For years after she ran away, she'd checked the street before leaving the house in case the smell of gin was there, followed by her staggering father. She thought she saw him everywhere she went. Between the shelves in the library he'd be there, his dark greasy hair, eyes that bored into her, sinister with anger. In the diner, she would see him open the door, as her breath caught in her throat, and he'd raise his cane. Even the ghost of him followed her.

Mrs. Meyers closed her book with a snap, as if knowing what Courtney was thinking, and replaced her glasses on top of her head. The worry lines on her forehead more prominent, she asked, "Why don't you take the day off and go find yourself a man?"

Courtney forced a smile, bowing her head to hide her irritation. The endless argument of a hero for Courtney. Heroes were as fictional as Mrs. Meyers' romance novels. She might have felt honored to be worried about, if not that everyone seemed to think she needed a man in her life. "Like who? I think old man Finley's son is getting his third divorce. Maybe he's available."

"Okay, smart mouth." Mrs. Meyers pointed. "Go home anyway." She ignored the Courtney's protests and shooed her toward the door. "You won't meet a man sitting around here."

"You know I'm only going to go home and do nothing."

Edith grunted as her self-proclaimed cold black heart twisted in her chest. "You're twenty-seven years old, Courtney. You need to be married and chasing rug rats."

Courtney had no argument for that. "Fine, I'll go home. But there's no man there that I'm aware of."

"Always a smart mouth."