Where the Heart Is Read Online Free PDF Page A

stall was empty, the room dark, but she didn’t have time to fumble for lights. She retched again and again until she felt drained.
    Then, she sat in the dark trying not to think about the mess she was in. She had been pushing it from her mind all day, but now, it rushed in.
    There must be, she told herself, things she could do. She could try to find Momma Nell, but she didn’t know Fred’s last name. She supposed there might be an umpires club, a place she could call, but there were probably lots of umpires named Fred.
    She could call the State School for Girls to see if Rhonda Talley was still there. But stealing the ice cream truck had been Rhonda’s first offense, so she was likely free.
    She could call Red, but she didn’t think he’d send her the money to come back to Tellico Plains. He’d already hired another waitress.
    Then Novalee thought about Willy Jack. She could hitchhike, try to get to Bakersfield on her own. But she didn’t know if J. Paul’s last name was Pickens or Paul.
    She wondered if Willy Jack had really left her. What if he had gone to get the car fixed. Or what if he was only playing a joke on her. He liked to do that. Maybe he drove off to scare her, then had a wreck before . . .
    What if he had been kidnapped. Someone with a gun could have forced him to . . . She saw things like that on television.
    What if . . .
    Play like . . .
    Just pretend . . .
    But Novalee knew none of that had happened. And she knew Where the Heart Is
    Momma Nell wouldn’t care where she was, Rhonda Talley probably wouldn’t even remember her—and Willy Jack had gone on without her.
    She tasted the bile rising in her throat again, felt the grip of pain in her stomach. She would have fought against it, but was too tired. She let herself slip into blackness and disappear into space.
    She didn’t know how long she had been in the bathroom. She had been too weak to move, too sick to care.
    Her clothes were damp and sticky, her skin clammy. Her head felt disconnected from her body. When she was finally able to stand, she felt like she was seeing everything from some great height.
    She got to the sink and held on while she splashed her face and rinsed her mouth. Her head throbbed and she ached all over, but she washed up as well as she could, then recovered her beach bag and eased out the door.
    The building was dark and quiet. A weak light came from the front, but she knew the place was empty . . . knew she was alone.
    She moved soundlessly through the store, toward the light, and found her possessions by the bench where she’d left them—the Welcome Wagon basket, her baby book, the buckeye tree. She gathered them up, as if she were preparing to leave, as if she were going home.
    Then she began to wander, like people do who have come from no place and have no place to go—like Crazy Man Dan, in Tellico Plains, who walked the streets at night carrying bits and pieces of other people’s lives.
    She moved aimlessly from one side of the store to the other, past rows of televisions without pictures, racks of toys without children.
    She shuffled past stacks of sheets, boxes of candy and shelves of 3 dishes. She walked some aisles many times, some not at all, but it didn’t matter.
    And then she saw a table, a round, glass-topped table beneath a red and white striped umbrella . . . a place where she could sit with the baby and drink chocolate milk and watch the sun go down. She ran her hand across the smooth glass top, swiping at dust, cleaning a place for the book and the basket. Nearby, she found some thin white trellises and moved two of them to the side of the table, then placed the tree between them.
    She eased into one of the chairs, opened her beach bag and took out the pictures of Sister Husband, Moses Whitecotton and Benny Goodluck, then propped them up against the basket. She moved the book nearer the center of the table, then pushed it back to where it had been. Finally . . . finished . . . she sat still for a