Gold, Fire & Refinement

Chapter Thirty-Five

"Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over. " ~Guy Finley

When Eva Pearl got up that day, she realized her mind was made up. Only days since Frank's death, after another restless night in the condo, she now knew she couldn't sleep in the downstairs bedroom. That meant she couldn't sleep upstairs or downstairs, and that's what led to her decision that it was time for her to leave—not tomorrow, and not next week. Dreadfully tired and sleepy, she knew she had to leave that day. 

After taking a shower, getting dressed, and going online, she printed out driving directions from Las Vegas to Jackson, Mississippi. She needed directions to her sister's house on Strawberry Circle, because she planned to stop there before heading home to Silver Water. While printing out the directions, something leaped in her stomach and it became clearer that she hadn't been home in nearly ten years. Once she was done getting the directions, she went online and dropped the class she was taking at UNLV, then she emailed her instructor to let him know she had a personal emergency and would re-enroll in the course as soon as possible. With no time to think about not having slept in days, she knew there would never be a better time for her to leave. Frank had lots of friends and a very sneaky business partner, who was his only investor—his brother. She'd never met the guy, but she felt it would still be best for her to go, now. 

The good thing was Frank's associates didn't know her real name or where she was from, so they wouldn't know where to find her even if they decided to look. Not that she thought any of them would, because the only man she knew who thought he owned her was Frank, and he was gone. For good.

Upstairs in the bedroom she once shared with Frank, Eva went to the room-sized walk-in closet and started pulling clothing off hangers. She deposited a pile on the bed, then went back to the closet and stood for several minutes staring at a complete set of Louis Vuitton luggage. Frank got it for her to use when she traveled with him as he pimped her out all around the world. "Nothing but the best for his Brown Pearl," he always said. But, as expensive as it was, Louis Vuitton wasn't good enough for her now. Today, she needed the "best of the best." After collecting her things, she started packing up the old beige canvas luggage set she'd used ten years ago when she left home. A high school graduation gift from her older sister, Josie, she was supposed to use it to take her things with her to Jackson City University. Instead, once she got to Jackson, she bought a bus ticket and used it to travel to New Orleans, to meet Frank.

Walking back and forth from the closet to her bed, she packed in a hurry as something started nudging at her insides. It was something Frank showed her about five years ago, before things got rocky between them. After convincing herself not to look, she decided she had to know if it was still there. Surely he spent it, she thought, once he started using drugs again. As far as she knew, she was the only person he ever told about the stash of cash he kept as their "emergency fund." She went inside the closet and kicked away the piles of shoes and shoe boxes Frank placed over the spot. Then she got on her knees and pulled up the strip of carpet he cut loose years ago. What she saw in front of her made her smile for the first time in days. It was still there. Five years had passed since he told her about it, and it was still there. Staring at a lot of cash, she decided Frank must have forgotten about it. Or else, why would he have left it there once he knew she wanted to leave him? She scooped it up and then counted it. It was all there. Thirty thousand dollars. The exact amount he showed her five years ago.

Looking at all the money now spread out in front of her on the carpet, she gasped, then started laughing, hysterically. Frank had forgotten about their emergency fund, and now, leaving Las Vegas, for her, qualified as an emergency. Since she was the only one left of the two of them, the money was rightfully hers: a woman with five-hundred dollars in her bank account. This, she decided, was a down payment on her reparations. Frank had finally done something right by her. All the other women who worked for him earned salaries, but as his live-in girlfriend, he never paid her. "We're partners," he always said. "Whatever I own, you own half." The only problem was, they weren't married, and he'd never given her those words in writing.