When she started the engine, soft music spilled forth, tumbling out of her windows. “Blue Moon,” an old Cowboy Junkies recording that flung Mick back to being a nine-year-old kid. Chastity from Desert Rose used to play that song. She hadn’t stayed at the ranch long. A couple of months and then hopped on a bus and never came back. She’d been young. Said she was nineteen, but he was pretty sure she was lying. Saw her coming out of the bathroom once without her makeup on, didn’t look more than fourteen, fifteen tops. His grandma had put her in the bedroom next to his. The walls were thin. He could hear everything. Wasn’t spying. Couldn’t help it. She didn’t like being a prostitute; that was for sure. But the johns sure loved her with her pale-blond hair and gangly limbs. More often than not, she was the one they picked out of the lineup. Got so when she would bring a customer in, Mick would grab a book, go sit outside. He’d know when her trick was done. She’d put on that song, play it after the john had left, while she remade the bed, wiped out the sink, rehung the towels, singing along, crying by the end. Always. And Mick wondered now, as he had then, what was her connection to that old song? Had it been her mother’s favorite? And if so, was her mother dead? Is that why Chastity was on her own so young?

“Blue Moon.” The song haunted Mick. Except it sounded different when Rachel sang along as her car disappeared down the driveway. There was more a sense of celebration as she sang, a freedom to her voice and her movements that morning that was at odds with her conservative apparel and yanked-back, constricted hairdo. Why did she yank it back like that? It had looked beautiful unbound.

Mick hadn’t heard her vehicle return, but it was possible he missed it. Who was she? Obviously the woman was highly skilled, so how did she end up working for me? What circumstances propelled her to take this job? And then, like a homing pigeon, his thoughts returned to Where did she go? Followed by the refrain It’s none of your business where she goes or what she gets up to on her days off.