Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [93]
That had made the girl so mad that she got up and left her friends sitting there, face-to-face with Trina and without nearly the same amount of bravado and meanness. They paid their bill and left.
Trina had found the boxes of matches on her landing, told Malene about that, and had even caught a couple of teenagers planning to leave a can of gasoline at her front door. She had heard them creep up the steps, and she opened the door as soon as she knew they were there. One of them jumped off the landing, and the other slipped and fell, tumbling down the stairs and taking quite a beating. Even though all of these incidents had troubled Trina a bit, it was that piece of paper, finding it stuck inside her door, watching the young woman she had never seen before walking down the street putting fliers in all the doors of all the houses around her, that was the final straw.
Trina opened it and read:
Come to the church.
Come see what the fire has done.
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.
She folded the paper and held it.
When she found it and read it the first time, she hadn’t understood what it meant. She thought that maybe it was some kind of community-organizing prompt. She thought maybe somebody was hoping to have a church service. She even considered that Father George was trying to rally the town for Mass. But then she remembered that the priest was leaving town, and when she asked Fred and Bea about the flier and they explained that they hadn’t heard who was responsible, only that everyone had gotten one, Trina suddenly understood that this was her demise. The people of Pie Town were finally being organized to bring her down. It was a lynching party, she was sure of it. And even though she didn’t know who the woman was leaving the fliers, gathering the townsfolk together, Trina figured she was some messenger from the Catholic church, some member of Rob Chavez’s family, or some relative of his girlfriend. Trina didn’t really know who was behind this idea to run her out or have her arrested or cause her some harm, but she knew that it was about to happen and that the people of Pie Town would easily turn into a mob and come for her.
Trina was not so much concerned for herself, since she knew what she was capable of handling. But she was concerned for Roger, the sheriff who had given her a place to stay and never taken a rent check from her, who had stood up for her after the fire, telling people she was not responsible and to leave her alone. She was concerned for Fred and Bea, the couple who had given her work and not bothered her about her pregnancy and who had already experienced a decline in business since the fire. She was concerned about Malene and Alex and that the townspeople might distance themselves from them when they needed their friends the most. And she was concerned about the baby. She didn’t know how she would be received in Amarillo—she hadn’t been able to contact Jolene or the others—but she thought it couldn’t be worse than what she was facing in Pie Town. So Trina had quit her job at the diner and written two letters she planned to give to Roger and Alex. She was leaving, pushed out, bullied, forced to exit before she was ready.
She put the paper in her duffel bag, a sort of sick memento to remind her not to get attached to another new town, and wiped her eyes. She was trying to zip up the top of the bag when she heard the knock on the door.
“Frank, I’m not quite ready,” she yelled as she left the sofa.
Trina kept her hand on the door handle when she saw who was standing there.
“Hello,” the girl said. “I know you don’t want to see me, but I just need to talk.”
Trina stepped back and opened the door. “I’m getting ready to leave in an hour,” she said. “So say what you need to say and get out.”
Katie White walked in and Trina closed the door.
Chapter Thirty-five
Roger and Malene had decided as soon as they heard about the fliers that they would not attend the Sunday morning meeting.