A Place Called Harmony Read Free Page B

same.”
    Clint didn’t argue, but picking a wife this way seemed like scraping the bottom of the barrel. He looked down at his worn boots and decided he was already at the bottom. Half the townspeople thought of him as a drunk, and the other half felt sorry for him and offered to buy him a drink. If he married an ex-con, some would say he was marrying up.
    The first woman out of the gate ran toward an old couple standing as close as the guard would allow. All three hugged and cried. No matter what she’d done, she obviously was still their baby.
    The next two walked out together, yelling for Harden to pull the wagon closer and take them home. One of the women winked at Clint as she walked by. “Come on by tonight, honey. I’m offering rides for half price to celebrate.”
    Clint stared at their flimsy clothes. They were dressed for work already in ragged lace and see-through silk.
    Lightstone filled him in on facts. “The women can wear what they were arrested in home, or the prison gives them one of the dresses they wore in prison. Most have worn that outfit for far too long already, so if they have anything else they change out of prison clothes.”
    A middle-aged woman came out in what had to be the uniform she’d worn in prison: a tattered apron over a gray dress with a plain collar. A shawl made with little skill was tied around her shoulders but looked like it would offer no shelter from the rain.
    The man with the knife stood and waited as she walked to him. “’Bout time,” was all he said as they turned and walked into the night.
    Clint thought if he ever wanted a lower level of melancholy than he had every day, he’d come back and watch this scene again.
    The last woman out was tall and dressed in a gray traveling suit that appeared finely tailored, but it was wrinkled. She looked almost a proper lady, but her clothes seemed a few sizes too big and her shoes were dilapidated and scuffed beyond repair. She held a bundle in her arms and another slung over her shoulder.
    Clint glanced at a kid by the gate, thinking maybe he was meeting her, but he just shrugged and walked away. She obviously wasn’t someone he was looking for.
    The woman raised her head to glance around, but her eyes were dull as if she had little hope. Her hair was too short to pull back and hung down, dark and lifeless, across part of her face. Anyone seeing her would guess she’d been ill. Prison thin. Moonlight pale.
    Harden whistled and signaled that she could join him in the wagon, but the thin woman shook her head.
    The guard shooed her along. “There’s a hotel down the road that’ll let you sleep there if you give them a day’s work come morning. They don’t take in most of the women who get out of here, but I’m guessing they’ll take you, Miss Karrisa. You tell them Sam said you paid your dues.”
    “Thank you,” the woman in gray said, pulling the bundle she carried in her arms closer as if sheltering it from the rain.
    Clint found himself staring and wondering what she’d done to end up in prison. She couldn’t be more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Her movements were slow, as if she were testing every step like an old woman on uneven ground. Maybe she’d been hurt or sick, or beaten.
    Surely no one beat her on her last day of prison.
    The thought turned his stomach.
    Lightstone took one step in her direction and she moved away. “Miss,” he said too loud, then lowered his voice. “I’m the sheriff over in Huntsville and will be happy to give you a ride to the little hotel the guard mentioned. You’ll be safe with me, and I promise you’ll be safe there for the night.”
    She looked up and Clint saw that she didn’t believe Lightstone. How many people must have lied to her, Clint wondered. Frightened round eyes set into dark circles looked his direction for only a moment.
    “I might have a job for you if you’re interested,” the sheriff rushed on. “I could tell you about it and then you could pick