She and Virginia hadn’t discussed the rental amount last night, meaning Harmony wasn’t sure if she even had enough to cover the first week, let alone a few months or more of letting the room. The sooner she had a job, the sooner she’d have one less thing to worry about.

Please guide my steps today, she prayed silently as she passed halfway through the kitchen and paused near the fridge. After a quick debate on whether or not she should fix herself a bowl of cereal, she decided it was best not to impose upon Mrs. Clementine’s kindness until she knew she’d have a way to cover the expense of her room and board.

With that decision made, Harmony’s stomach grumbled again. It would have to make do with a handful of breath mints from the stash she kept buried somewhere in her purse.

“I’ll find something. I will,” she told her reflection in the rearview mirror. Desperation had a way of producing results, after all, and Charleston had hundreds of restaurants. Surely one of them would be in need of an experienced waitress.

Now all she had to do was keep her big mouth in line and remember to smile—smile nonstop, never stop smiling.

Harmony frowned at herself in the rearview mirror. Perhaps to get it out of her system, or perhaps because some part of her knew that trouble would find her no matter where she went, no matter how far away she got from Alan.

The best she could hope for was to delay the inevitable—and to find herself a job.

Here goes nothing…

Chapter 12

Harmony

Harmony drove downtown and parked on the street in the first open spot she found. After using the last of her quarters to feed the meter, she began to search for an eatery that was hiring.

In the past, Harmony would have extended her hunt for a new job to the many retail shops that lined the city streets, but a few years back she’d faced such abuse from an unhappy customer that she’d vowed to only work at restaurants from that day forward. It didn’t help that she’d told that rude customer exactly where she could place her non-returnable item—and it wasn’t back in the box.

Oh, bless that bitter woman’s heart!

She’d chosen downtown for her search not just for the variety of choices, but also because she preferred to avoid franchise restaurants if she could. Harmony had been through many jobs in the nine years since she’d set out on her own and had a fair number of rules when it came to selecting a good one: check the reviews on Yelp to make sure people like the food, order a meal to make sure they have good reason to like it, choose a place that’s one of a kind even if it’s a bit of a hole in the wall, and—most importantly—never date a coworker.