Beckett's Cinderella Read Free Page A

than her own. She could always get a job; the classified ads were full of help-wanted ads in the summertime. But Fred Grant was another matter. She would never forget how he’d welcomed her that day last May when she’d turned up on his doorstep.
    â€œSalina’s daughter, you say? All the way from Texas? Lord bless ye, young’un, you’ve got the family look, all right. Set your suitcase in the front room, it’s got a brand-new mattress.”
    The mattress might have been brand-new at one time, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and at that point in herlife, she’d been a beggar. Now, she was proud to say, she earned her own way. Slowly, one step at a time, but every step was straightforward, documented and scrupulously honest.
    â€œI’ll be outside if you need me,” she called now as she headed out the front door. Fred Grant had his pride. It would take him at least five minutes to negotiate the uneven flagstone path between the house and the tin-roofed stand he’d established nearly forty years ago when he’d hurt his back and was no longer able to farm.
    Gradually he and his wife had sold off all the land, hanging on to the house and the half acre it sat on. Fred ruefully admitted they had wasted the money on a trip to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and a fur coat for his wife. He had buried her in it a few years later.
    Now he and Liza had each other. Gradually she had settled into this quiet place, far from the ruins of the glamorous, fast-paced life that had suited James far more than it had ever suited her.
    By liquidating practically everything she possessed before she’d headed here—the art, her jewelry and the outrageously expensive clothes she would never again wear—she had managed to pay off a few of James’s victims and their lawyers. She’d given her maid, Patty Ann Garrett, a Waterford potpourri jar she’d always admired. She would have given her more, for she genuinely liked the girl, but she’d felt honor bound to pay back as much of what James had stolen as she could.
    Besides, her clothes would never fit Patty Ann, who was five foot four, with a truly amazing bust size. In contrast, Liza was tall, skinny and practically flat. James had called her figure classy, which she’d found wildly amusing at the time.
    For a woman with a perfectly good college degree, never mind that it wasn’t particularly marketable, she’d been incredibly ignorant. She was learning, though. Slowly, steadily, she was learning how to take care of herself and someone who was even needier than she was.
    â€œGood morning…yes, those are grown right here in Currituck County.” She would probably say the same words at least a hundred times on a good day. Someone—the Tourist Bureau, probably—had estimated that traffic passing through on summer Saturdays alone would be roughly 45,000 people. People on their way to and from the beach usually stopped at the larger markets, but Uncle Fred had his share of regulars, some of whom said they’d first stopped by as children with their parents.
    After Labor Day, the people who stopped seemed to take more time to look around. A few even offered suggestions on how to improve her business. It was partly those suggestions and partly Liza’s own creativity she credited for helping revitalize her uncle’s small roadside stand, which had been all but defunct when she’d shown up. First she’d bought the secondhand cooler and put up a sign advertising free ice water, counting on the word free to bring in a few customers. Then she’d found a source of rag dolls,hand-woven scatter rugs and appliquéd canvas tote bags. She’d labeled them shell bags, and they sold as fast as she could get in a new supply. Last fall she’d added a few locally grown cured hams. By the time they’d closed for the winter, business had