Slow Dancing Read Free Page B

phone.
    “It’s Frank McPherson, Boyd. I gotta slight problem here,” he said. “Margaret done took off again, but this time she did it right under our nose. I turned my back for a second and she was gone.”
    “Okay, I’ll come out,” Boyd replied. They said good-bye and hung up. Frank walked to the back of the house to the bedrooms to get Ellen. It was a tiny house, cottage style.
    Frank’s father built it after the war, and when he died, Frank left the apartment above the garage and moved back to his childhood home. Two months later, he met Margaret and her baby daughter, Ellen.
     
    ***
     
    Margaret Fisher’s car, a vintage Buick, broke down as she was driving from Saint Augustine to Galveston. She just made it into the village limits when it started to spit, the engine sputtering for seconds until it died. She looked in her review mirror as it came to a rolling stop. Ellen was just two years old, in her little car seat, smiling and shaking a toy at her mother.
    “Momma, go!” she said leaning forward.
    “Nope, can’t do it. The car is broken, sweetheart. We have to stop here, unfortunately.” She looked around the dusty street and saw the line of storefronts, the gas station and the post office, and across the street, the blue painted cement block building with a neon sign out front spelling out Frank’s Garage. “Thank God, there’s a garage.” She got out of the car and opened the back door, reaching in to unbuckle her toddler from the car seat.
    “Walk!” Ellen hollered squirming to get down. On the sidewalk, Margaret put her daughter down.
    “You have to hold my hand, honey,” she said, gripping her child’s hand, the terror of a dream she’d had the previous night in which unseen forces, still vivid in her memory, took the baby from her. Ellen didn’t fight her, staying close by. Locking the car, Margaret wasn’t sure what sort of town this was, whether she and her belongings were safe or not.
    Looking around the area, Margaret saw an old-fashioned place, quaint almost; a throw back to another time with a café in the center of town and a small, family owned grocery store crowded with locals, the sign out front; Family-Owned Grocery Store. She chuckled, first noting the women chatting with each other on the sidewalk and then, more sobering, groups of motley looking men sitting along a wooden bench near the entrance. They were waiting to assist shoppers as they packed their cars. She decided if she lived there, she could never shop for food at a place that hired such intimidating help, not knowing the men were indigents the storeowners allowed to work for tips. When she reached Frank’s, a customer was just leaving and he held the door for her to enter, smiling at her. Frank was still behind the counter.
    “Help you?” he asked.
    “My car just broke down, luckily, practically right outside of your door.” She pointed to the car across the street, and Frank came around to the front of the counter to look out the window.
    “Let’s take a look,” he said. Just then, Ellen looked up at him and with her free hand, grabbed his.
    “Dada,” she said. Margaret burst out laughing. Frank stopped in his tracks and looked down at the little girl, clearly moved.
    “Oh, sorry! Pay no attention. She’s at the age where every man is daddy,” Margaret said, chuckling. And then under her breath, “I’m not married to her father.” A raise of her eyebrows and a grin said it all. She wasn’t married to anyone . Frank, not used to being flirted with and ignorant of the ways of women, took the little girl’s hand, sure his face was red.
    “This yers?” he said, nodding his head toward the car and she said yes . “Better stay up on the sidewalk now.” Gently withdrawing his hand from Ellen’s and giving it to Margaret, he reached over and popped the hood. He looked it over, but couldn’t see anything obvious.
    “Why not go get something to drink at the café and I’ll pull it into the shop