The Girl Next Door

The Girl Next Door (Chapters 1 - 4)

-1-

Emma's first order of business upon crossing the Vermont border was to pull over at the Welcome Center and clean herself up. She'd been in the car for more than twenty-four hours, driving north up the coast, stopping only to rest and to cry. The rest stops were as infrequent as she could make them. She'd spent the night in her car at a truck stop outside of Washington, DC, dozing uneasily in the car amidst the bright bustle of the well-lit parking lot. The uncontrollable crying jags that had wracked her for the past three days posed a far more frequent interruption to her progress. The whole trip, she'd had to pull off the road every time her misery got the better of her. She’d lost count of all the times she’d had to stop to mop her face, blow her nose, and give herself a stern talking-to to get her emotions under control, as they had not been since she’d come home from a routine trip to the vet to find her home in flames, her career in ruins, and her fiancé vanished like smoke.

The bright side, if there could be such a thing in the midst of such a tragedy, was that Ludo appreciated the frequent breaks. Ludo was Emma’s bulldog, and his steady, affectionate presence provided immeasurable comfort. For most of the trip, he’d curled up in the passenger seat with his short, wrinkled snout tucked under his stubby back leg, grunting and snoring like an old man. Just looking at his little barrel-shaped body curled up beside her made Emma feel a little bit better, a little less alone... though at the moment she wasn’t sure how she could manage to keep up the luxurious life to which he’d grown accustomed. She had barely enough money for gas and groceries, much less dog biscuits and chew toys.

No matter how deeply he slept, whenever they stopped, Ludo sat up and panted expectantly, his avid gaze on the car door. He was unfailingly eager for whatever new surroundings greeted him at each stop, equally content to pee on graffiti-sprayed jersey barriers in blighted urban neighborhoods as he was to water trees in the loveliest, well-landscaped parks. More than once, Ludo’s dogly optimism gave Emma the push she needed to move forward. This stop was no different: he sat up and looked out the windows at the green Vermont hills and the large, barn-shaped Welcome Center and looked back at Emma, his droopy, dark eyes pleading, ‘ Let’s go already, Mom. ’

Emma wiped her face on one of the last tissues in her dwindling supply, took a deep, steadying breath, and hooked Ludo’s leash to his collar. She ignored the protests of her own bladder to walk Ludo around a gravel path in a grassy field, strewn with rusted farm implements, so that he could empty his. She was not impressed with this farm-themed welcome to the state she would reluctantly make her home: she needed no reminder that she was leaving the comforts of civilization for a rural backwater town with a population of less than ten thousand souls. She was not thrilled by the prospect.

When he’d done his business, Emma walked Ludo back to the car and told him to wait while she went inside. He looked at her reproachfully for a long moment, but she knew it was an act. When she came back from the bathroom, he would be sound asleep, utterly untroubled by her absence.

She was uncomfortably aware of the curious stares of strangers as she walked through the lobby to the restroom. Judging by the heads that swung around to do double-takes as she passed, Emma knew she must look dreadful. The long mirror above the bathroom sinks in the ladies’ room confirmed that suspicion. She ducked into a stall and used the privacy it provided to put herself together as much as possible, which wasn’t much. She needed a shower and a few good, solid nights’ sleep, but she didn’t hold out high hopes of that happening any time soon. Even though she was within an hour of her destination, she didn’t anticipate that life would get much easier when she arrived. Worry would continue to plague her rest and leave ugly, dark circles under her eyes and fine lines around her thinly pressed lips.