This is an entry for Writer’s Digest Magazine’s September Big 10 issue Your Story prompt contest. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

   It’s odd how fate intervenes.
   I guess I was meant to help her. I’d seen her, not 24 hours ago at the filling station just inside city limits. Bright blue dress blowing in the breeze, those legs, how could you not. She was on the payphone crying, desperate sounds in her voice. Stuff like that just tugs at your strings, you know? I started to head to my car, well, not my car. Samantha insisted on troubling a guy two counties over to match some cheap lipstick she’d found in a dollar store. Deep pink, couldn’t even wear the stuff because it broke her out, but she had to have the color. Hope she likes it, that’s a LOT of pink…

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   Anyway, I’d seen this girl, all blue dress and legs and long hair. She’d not had a good time of it from the looks of things so I turned and started to walk over and see what’s up. Listen a sec, see if I could help, so I leaned over and made like I was looking at the front page in the newspaper bin. Then she turns. Pregnant. Man, that couldn’t be good with the bits of anger I was hearing on the other end. Her eyes caught me though, clear as the old blue glass bottles Sam liked to collect in our kitchen window at home. Almost lost my balance.
   She turns again, embarrassed, and I stood up. Best to just leave that one alone I thought, not my problem and besides, she’s got someone she can talk to even if they don’t get along. In my experience, the one’s you fight with the hardest are the ones who love you the most. Probably her dad or something.
   I climb in the car and call Sam. She can tell I’m tired and I’m getting “Don’t you get a scratch on that car John McMurthy.” So, despite wanting to drive straight through, I pull in for the night.
   Next morning I got up to the sun shining in my eyes and I went down to the diner for breakfast. Seeing the menu I start thinking Sam was pretty smart, better food than I’d get from the filling station. I eat, pay my bill, and head back out for home.    Everything was fine for about 37 miles then, wouldn’t you know it, the Lipstick Limousine sputters and dies. Shit.
   Get out. Pop the hood. No clue, nothing I can see, so I start to slam the hood then think better of it. (the couch isn’t that comfortable) I close her back up and grab the cell out of the car when I notice her. Had she been there all this time? Damn I need my eyes checked.
   Blue dress is standing not 15 feet away, bag in her hand, staring off across the road. I can still see the tear tracks down her cheeks in the sunlight. She doesn’t move, just keeps staring, so I look over and there’s a small house in the distance across a field of browning green pasture. White sheets are blowing in the wind on the line at the side of the house. There’s a dog chasing a little boy around a woman hanging stuff on the line. Must be his grandmother, white hair and apron, regular Aunt Bea. I look back at Blue and she hasn’t moved.
   I sit on the hood, pulling the hook for my keys and tucking it in my pocket before sitting again (I’ll buff it, she won’t know), and I call Sam.
   “Gonna be late, babe.”
   I spend a couple minutes calming Sam down, assuring her it just overheated and I’d take it in to Charlie on my way back through town just to make sure as soon. Should make it for dinner, though I might be a little late, but her Pink Parade Float (I didn’t say that, not that stupid) would be fine. I was going to have to call her back if it didn’t start up again, but she didn’t need to worry just yet. Besides, I wanted to see what this Blue thing was all about.
   Cell phone in my pocket, I sat there a minute. She just kept staring. No tears, just a frozen look, her eyes on that house. I cleared my throat a couple times then was about to get up when she finally moved. She walked across the road and up to the barbed wire that surrounded the pasture. I was about to say something but she was already half through, sliding carefully in between. No clue how she did it with that belly. She took a couple steps and turned toward me finally, smiling. She kinda laughed, half amusement at the look on my face probably, but there was something bittersweet about it at the end. Her face went blank again and she turned to make the long stretch of pasture toward the house.
   I watched her go, she didn’t turn around again, and I wondered what her story was. There were a few things I could come up with, but I’d never really know and that made me sad. Whatever it was, it was obvious she just needed some courage. Maybe she was going home.
   I got back in and tried the engine again. Started right up like nothing happened.
   “Fickle thing, probably mad about the color she painted you huh?” I had to laugh at that.
   I made it home, just in time for dinner, and relayed my day to Sam while we ate. Sam had gone all out so I was glad I hadn’t missed it.
   “So did she say anything?”
   “Nope, didn’t ask.” Sam had started to give me a disapproving look. “I was going to but she just started walking. I’d have helped if I could, you know that.”
   “I know…” Sam stared down at her a plate a moment.
   “But?” I knew that contemplative look of hers.
   “What did you say she was wearing?”
   “A blue dress, really bright, one of those sundresses like you wear, blue suitcase. Why?”
   Sam set her fork down, sweet potato half eaten and getting cold. She walked over to the kitchen counter and flipped through a newspaper sitting there, crossword puzzle long finished. She stood over it, reading under her breath and shaking her head. “John…”    I went to her, she was shaking.
   “Oh, that poor thing…” She turned her head into my shoulder and cried as I read.

MORE SIGHTINGS OF THE BLUE LADY
Fairmount, IN (May 1, 2009) – It has become an almost annual celebration as the woman in blue makes her return to Grant County.
Jessica Corbet, lost at age 23 while giving birth to her son in 2001, was seen along County Road 15 yesterday afternoon. Corbet was survived by her mother, Fairmount resident Alice Fagan, and her now past father, Carl Fagan. Carl Fagan committed suicide after his daughter passed. The family at the time refusing comment, though, it has since come to light that Corbet and her father had a fight shortly before her death. What it was in regard to the family has declined comment. Unbeknownst to her family, Corbet had married in secret two months earlier. Corbet’s husband, Jackson Earl Corbet, was reported missing in action in Dubai two weeks prior to her return home on the 1st of May, 2001. Phillip Corbet, Jessica’s son now age 8, was adopted by his grandmother in October of the same year.
At the request of the Fagan/Corbet family, reporters are asked not to solicit them out of respect for the family.

   I’m not sure if Sam was still shaking, or if it was me, but this was definitely not something I was prepared for. I just stood there and let it sink in. In the end, I was glad her son was well but…I can’t imagine what it must be like. Always coming home, never being able to hold him. I closed my eyes and held Sam a little tighter. Sam had made a special dinner that night to tell me we were pregnant.
   It’s odd how fate intervenes. Looking back, I know now that I was meant to see Jessica Corbet. She reminded me how important life was and that it was the little kindnesses that make the difference.

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