Laundry day was the day that Liz had time to look through magazines. Even if they were years old, she loved poring over the pictures of the insides of houses, especially the before and after ones. Now she had a house of her own and she could redo it any way she wanted. But other than moving around the furniture, she wasn’t sure she wanted to change anything at all.

Nothing other than decorate it for Christmas with twinkling lights and lots of stuff. Plain old Christmas stuff that I can keep from one year to the next. I don’t care if I have a whole room full of it. Right now, there are two empty bedrooms and I can store it all there, she thought as she drove.

Walmart was all the way across town, but she wasn’t in a big hurry, so she drove slowly, taking a long look at the storefronts. She’d been in Bowie once a year ever since she was born. She knew where the grocery store was located, right along with Walmart, the old location and the new one, the laundry, and the Dairy Queen. Aside from that, until that day, nothing else mattered. But now she noticed a couple of furniture stores, a western wear store, banks, and several other places that looked interesting.

She snagged a parking place close to the door and checked the price of gas. It was two cents cheaper at the place next to Walmart than the service station north of Bowie, so she made a mental note to fill up before she left town. She took her time in the store, looking at the new fall shirts and jackets before she started filling her cart with items from her list. She didn’t even see Becca until their carts came within an inch of crashing together as she rounded the end of an aisle and came face-to-face with her.

“Well, hello again, Libby,” Becca said with a fake smile.

“It’s Liz, not Libby. And hello to you,” Liz said.

Becca leaned on her overloaded cart filled with large bags of dog food. “So, are you all moved into Haskell’s place?”

Liz pushed her cart to one side. “Yes, I am. It was nice seeing you again, Becca.”

Becca reached out and grabbed the side of the cart. “Are you sure you don’t want to sell and go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under?”

Liz controlled the burst of anger that boiled up from her toes to her chest. “I’m very sure. It’s not even mine until spring. Uncle Haskell is letting me live there for a few months to be sure that I want to settle down in this area.”

“And if you stay?” Becca asked.

“Then it’s my property,” Liz said.

Blaze would like Becca for sure. He tended to go for women with blond hair and green eyes, and he really liked tall, tough women who dressed like Becca. Blaze and Becca… It even sounded good together. She fit all the criteria, but Blaze didn’t stick with anyone more than a week or two, so the bubble in her imagination about Becca running off to help in a carnival burst with a loud bang.