The officer was back in under five minutes, the disgust he’d been showing concerning my presence in the situation had now increased across the planes of his face and jawline, clear down through the rest of his posture. Did I mention that it was a nice posture, as in military straight with his chest forward and his shoulders back?
If I’d been someone else, mainly one of the young ladies I’d gone to school with, I might have gushed, “Oh, he’s so very manly and (big sigh) so incredibly attractive,” with a half-suppressed twitter of a giggle and a flirtatious hair toss, while my eyes fluttered dark, curled lashes.
But I was dealing with other issues and was never one to announce my observations in such matters, even if, like those girls, I ever veered into such reveries. Being independent-minded and self-reliant never allowed for those kinds of yearnings. I had learned that long ago.
I wasn’t perfect, of course, I’d concealed a few childhood crushes back in school, but mine were always the kind that played hopscotch through my nighttime dreams and dried with the morning dew. When I sat at my table at school, I never even noticed that Frank’s hair fell into his deep, blue eyes in a very inviting way, or when Steffen’s singing voice sent shivers up and down my spine, or just before I left the town, how Ben’s manly cologne made me want to inhale deeper whenever he came near.
Those kinds of aspirations were meant for girls with long blonde hair, pink or yellow dresses that displayed fashionable, full-sleeved cuffs, and family names that held a position in the village hierarchy.
“Wake up,” the officer said, striding closer to me than before. “Didn’t you hear me ask your name?”
“I’m sorry, I guess I was thinking about other things,” I apologized. I didn’t want to tell him where my thoughts had been. Let him assume it concerned the boys’ parents or something related to that.
A moment passed, then he said, “You were just about to tell me your name and explain what you are doing in this area.”
“I was?”
I could make up a new name, or I could go with the old. But the officer’s eyes were peering into my soul. I knew he’d catch me in a lie. Did it matter anyway? News traveled between towns and villages by word of mouth, and all gossip was newsworthy. It wouldn’t take long before someone would bring word of a missing girl, dubbed the village witch, who rode a handsome, dappled gray stallion. I’d need to be long gone by then.