Chapter 8Bonnie slouched in a plastic chair on her patio as evening darkened into night. A fitful breeze brought the mingled scents of honeysuckle, roses and desert dust to her. Even at dusk, the breeze touched her skin like an animal’s hot breath. It would be cooler inside, but she was so tired of the confining, lonely little house.
There wasn’t one damn thing to do, either. Summer reruns on TV, the same old stuff on the radio, and she’d read every magazine in the house from cover to cover. She’d even caught up most of her classwork. Empty time had not weighed on her this way since childhood.
Today marked a week she’d been cast-free. This morning, she’d walked six blocks and back, with only a few small twinges from her ankle. She was ready to discard Mercedes’s cane, no longer finding t
