by Laura Drake
He opened it. A McMuffin. Sweet. “Thanks.” He ignored the foil-covered cup of orange juice and dug in.
“What do you think of this town?” She talked loud, over the wind.
“It blows.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“Then don’t ask me a question after I take a bite.”
She looked over at him. “So you’re not tied to this place?”
He snorted. “I want to go to a city. Like a real city—like L.A. or something.” They had real gangs there. He could take his pick.
She smiled. “Then you’re going to like living with me. I move around.”
It might be cool, getting to see places. “I can hang with that.”
“Great. Then when you get out of school in June, we’ll hit the road, okay?”
“Cool.” Actually, it was cold but he didn’t care. The wind whipped by, making it feel like they were going a hundred instead of thirty-five. People in other cars stared. He rested his arm on the door and squinted at them. This part might not be too bad.
Ten minutes later, Priss pulled into the circle in front of his school. Cars ahead and behind them dropped off kids. More kids hopped off the buses parked at the curb. Others milled on the sidewalk, yelling, running. A typical day.
He spotted Diego and almost waved like a butt-wipe second grader. He stopped himself in time. But Diego saw him, and elbowed Joe. Nacho took his time gathering his backpack so they could get a good look at his wheels. It was a beater, but it was a drop-top. With raised shocks and some painted flames—
“We’re clear, right, Nacho? You’re going to wait for me in front of the store after school?” She looked worried.
“I got it.” He hopped out and slammed the door, hard, to show her what he thought of her rules.
“Okay, you have a good day, Nacho. See you this afternoon.”
He crossed the sidewalk to his real family. The one he got to choose.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRISS WATCHED NACHO stride to the sidewalk and slap hands with two Hispanic boys. Well, that went about as well as I could expect.
When a horn bleated behind her, she moved up ten inches.
A tingle of consequence shivered down her spine and she shifted on the seat. She felt as if today she’d stepped through a door, a demarcation that would separate her life into before and after. She shook it off. Widow’s Grove was a way station, a branch to rest on before she flew off to the next adventure.
She wondered how she’d look back on this time. What kind of mother—no, guardian—would she be? She inched Mona forward a few feet. Well, she’d be a better one than her mother, that was for sure. Nacho would never have to lie awake, afraid in the dark. She would be what she’d wished her mother had been: attentive, understanding and present. She’d also make sure that Nacho felt comfortable talking to her about anything.
In fact, because she wasn’t his mother, maybe they could just be friends. Sure, she’d be the one setting down the rules, but somebody had to. He’d understand that.
Good friends. Yeah, that’s what I want.
They could take day trips on the weekends, exploring the area. Maybe they’d learn to parasail—or even surf! With happy thoughts she inched her way to the exit, hung a right and headed back to town.
Her shift at the bar didn’t start for an hour and a half, and she had one more chore to complete. Ms. Barnes had turned over the papers for Nacho, along with the key to her mother’s apartment. Apparently the state had decided Cora Hart’s belongings wouldn’t help them out of their fiscal crisis. Now Priss had to clear out the rest of the stuff, or pay rent for another week. As much as she was dreading going back there, she didn’t have a choice.
And that made her feel trapped. Again.
She rested her arm on Mona’s door. The sun winked through the morning cloud cover, then disappeared.
A scene flashed in her mind. One of the last scenes of a long and depressing movie.
Her mom stood at the stove smoking a cigarette, stirring potatoes frying in a cast-iron skillet. “You’re going to like him, Priss. He’s sweet, employed, and—”
“He’s married, Ma.”
“Well, he’s had a tough go of it. The marriage is not good. He’s going to file for a divorce. Soon.”
“So, in the meantime, he’s going to move in here? Do you realize I go to school with his kids, Ma?”
It was hopeless. All a guy had to do was ask and if Cora Hart wasn’t involved with someone else, she was his. She’d done stupid stuff before, like when she hooked up with that sleaze who had cleaned them out two years earlier. But this was a new low. She’d never messed with a married man before. “Do you know what’s going to happen when this gets around school?”
Her mother tapped the cigarette on the ashtray, put it back in her mouth and turned the greasy potatoes with the spatula. “You’ll like him. We’ll make a great family. You’ll see.”
Priss pulled Mona to the cracked curb in front of the so-called apartments. The tired paint and robust weeds didn’t look any better today. She sat a moment, staring at her memory that had slipped into the present. Something inside her firmed, like clay hardening in the sun.
It’s not going to be like that for Nacho. I’m going to listen to him. He’s going to know he has a say in what happens. It’s going to be him and me first, then everything and everyone else second.
At least for as long as she was here.
She slid the strap of her bag over her shoulder, checked the side mirror for traffic, then stepped out of her car. She strode to the back alley where she’d spied Dumpsters on the way by. Luckily one was empty. She muscled it across the alley and pushed it under the back window of her mother’s apartment.
Piece of cake. You can do this.
Today she didn’t need the scent of underprivileged that enveloped her when she walked in the door to take her back to those dark days. The ghost of her mother stood in the kitchen, stirring potatoes.
She ignored the vision and stepped into the tiny bedroom where Nacho had slept. Might as well start there. She opened the window, stripped the bed, and tossed the sheets out. She opened a plastic bin that had held his clothes, and filled it with anything that looked personal. There wasn’t much: a few Lego pieces, a G.I. Joe figure he’d probably outgrown and a couple of dime-store jigsaw puzzles.
Next, the closet. Her mother’s few clothes hung from hangers in limp accusation. She didn’t even examine them—straight out the window.
Keeping her head down to avoid ghosts, Priss dragged the trash can from the kitchen into the living room. Everything not belonging to the landlords got dumped in, including ashtrays and the rumpled threadbare sheets on the couch—her mother’s last bed. She pulled off the sheets and rolled them into a ball. But before she let them go, she lowered her nose and took a deep lungful of the desperation, hope and sadness that had been her mother.
A barnacled shell, buried so deep in the silt of her psyche that she’d forgotten it, suddenly burst open, spitting out a misshapen pitted, black pearl of guilt.
A strangled sob slipped out before her throat closed.
I should have at least stayed in touch. The pain of learning about her mother’s death from a stranger rose in her, fetid and slimy. Had her mother lain in a county hospital bed, breathing like a landed fish, wishing she could see her daughter one last time?
It isn’t the child’s job to rescue an adult. It’s supposed to be the other way around.
Shaking her head at her sentimental foolishness, Priss dropped the sheets in the trash, then walked to the kitchen. The sooner she got out of these backwaters, the better.
A half hour later, the apartment was empty. She took one last quick tour to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. She glanced in the bathroom and pulled the door to
close it when something brushed her hand. Hanging from a hook on the back of the door was an apron. She remembered it. Her mother’s barmaid apron.
The pocket gapped. Priss reached in and pulled out a roll of money, held together with a rubber band. No evening’s tips, these—twenties and tens, more than an inch thick. When she slid the band off and unfurled the bills, a piece of paper fell out. She unfolded it to find a list of states, with a line through Nevada, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. What, was she trying for a man in every state? Priss flipped through the bills, counting, stunned by the tally. What had she been saving for? Bail money for Nacho’s father before the trial? A deposit on a decent place to live in? Nah. Cora Hart had lived in places like this her entire life, and she’d been way too old a leopard to change her spots.
Priss fingered the rough, dingy white cotton rectangle with its long, dangling ties. Her mother had owned it forever. When it began whispering memories, Priss lifted it off the peg and tossed it over her shoulder to silence it.
Hell, she was back in her mother’s world—why not use her old apron? Priss told herself she wasn’t being sentimental, just practical; she needed an apron anyway.
The alarm on her phone blatted “Reveille.” Time to get to work. She slipped the map and the money into her purse, and took the few steps to the living room.
Snatching up the half-full plastic bin, she walked out, locked the door to the past once more and slipped the key under the door.
* * *
ADAM STOOD IN front of his narcotics shelf taking inventory, when a woman’s voice screeched in his pocket. Dang it, Sin must’ve reprogrammed his phone again. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and answered. “Sin, this is not funny. I work with octogenarians and a Lady Gaga ringtone is going to give someone a heart attack.”
“That’s Eat Your Dead, by the way. Lady Gaga is pop.” She spit the word like it was spoiled meat. “Special cleanup on aisle four, boss,” she whispered, and hung up.
He craned his neck, but couldn’t see the aisle from where he stood. He slipped his phone back in his pocket, walked past the cash register, and unlocked the door that kept the drugs secure.
He saw the kid the minute he pulled the door closed behind him. A Hispanic boy with sloppy, too-big clothes stood at the magazine rack with the casual “I’m not doing anything” demeanor of a shoplifter. Sin was an expert at spotting them but this one was more obvious than most. The kid stopped leafing through a muscle-car magazine, shot a glance up the aisle, then slipped the magazine in the waistband of his saggy jeans.
Damn it, these kids never gave up. Where were their parents? He was tired of little delinquents pilfering his stock. It was time to set an example that would deter other kids. The twerp’s luck had just run out because Adam was flat sick of this. He tipped his chin at Joyce, the cashier—it was the signal to let the kid go.
He followed the boy and once the door closed behind them, Adam grabbed the thief’s shirt collar.
“Hey, lemme go!” The punk twisted to see who had a hold of him.
Adam tightened his grip. “Go? The only place you’re going is jail.” He retrieved his cell from his pocket and scrolled his contacts while the kid struggled.
“I didn’t do anything. What’re you—a pervert? Lemme go!”
The kid was stronger than Adam would have guessed. He had to twist the boy’s T-shirt collar around his fist. “Settle. You’ll only make it worse.”
“Help!” The kid pulled at his collar, frantic. “Somebody help—he’s trying to kidnap me!”
Tourists strolling by slowed, uncertain.
A little old lady in orange Bermuda shorts stopped and glared at him. “What are you doing with that child?”
Oh, hell.
* * *
PRISS GUNNED THE engine, running ten miles over the posted twenty-five in the downtown area, checking the rearview mirror for cop strobes. She’d meant to be home a half hour ago, but Floyd had shown up late for work. She couldn’t very well walk away from a bar full of patrons.
But damn, it was Nacho’s first day with her, and now she’d left him cooling his heels on the sidewalk.
Great way to make a kid feel secure, Hart.
That wasn’t the way she’d wanted to start.
Something about the knot of people gathered in front of the drugstore made her heart bang like Mona’s engine on a bad day. There was no reason to believe this had anything to do with Nacho, but her shit-meter redlined just the same. Her stomach muscles snapped taut, clicking into defense mode. When she squealed to a stop at the curb, heads swiveled in her direction. She shut off Mona and stood on the seat to see over the small crowd.
“Help me, somebody!” Nacho strained like a dog at the end of a leash, the collar of his T-shirt choking him. Her landlord stood behind him, his fist knotted in cotton, his face redder than Nacho’s, fiddling with a phone.
“You let him go!” Priss yelled, vaulting over the passenger-side door.
Bystanders backed away as she charged in like a Pamplona bull.
She grabbed Adam’s forearm and squeezed. The muscle, like braided wire, didn’t give. “What are you doing? Can’t you see you’re choking him?” When he ignored her, she gave up on the arm, and grabbed Nacho’s shoulders instead and looked him in the eyes. “Stop fighting. You’re making it worse.”
“You’ll want to stay out of this.” Adam’s dark eyes were cool. “He’s a shoplifter. I’m calling the cops.” He hit a button on the phone and raised it to his ear.
“You. Let. Him. Go.” The steely, blood-tipped threat in her voice almost frightened her.
Adam let go.
Instinctively, her arms went around the boy’s shoulders. “He’s my brother.”
Nacho struggled in her embrace, then froze. So did Adam.
He hit a button and slowly lowered the phone. “He’s what?”
She stuck out her chest and tightened her grip on Nacho’s shoulders. Righteously indignant was a strong offense. “He’s my brother. He wouldn’t steal.”
God, please, he wouldn’t do that, would he?
She had to know. Her eyes traveled down to Nacho. Chin stuck out, lips a tight thin line, eyebrows matching commas of anger over eyes that...were larcenous.
Shit.
There was no doubt in her mind. He’d done it. A flush of heat spread up from her chest. Sweat popped at her hairline, but then freeze-dried in the chill rolling off her landlord.
“Really.” He dropped his phone into his pocket, then lifted the hem of Nacho’s shirt. He pulled out a magazine with a souped-up hot rod on the cover, garish flames painted on the hood. “You undoubtedly have a receipt for this, then.”
Nacho studied his sneakers. Priss squirmed inside as if she were the guilty party.
Apparently—and thankfully—public shaming wasn’t entertaining because the crowd broke up, wandering away in ones and twos.
“Look.” Priss swallowed, having no idea of what she’d say next. This very morning she’d rescued the kid from Social Services. Now he was facing juvie.
Two government institutions in one day? That has to be some kind of record.
Arguments, pleas and downright supplications whirled through her mind. She tested and discarded each in nanoseconds.
Adam glared at Nacho. Then at her. She could almost see him connecting dots that would lead to the holes in her story.
This was going to take a delicate blend of the truth and every bit of the manipulation she’d learned on the street. She relaxed her face into her “waif” look and raised her rounded eyes. “Could I talk to you for a second? Alone?”
“I’m not taking my eye off him, and no matter what you say, I’m calling the cops.”
“I understand.” She dug her fingers in the hollows next to Nacho’s collarbone. “You. Wait here. If
you move—”
He scrunched his shoulders and winced. “I won’t. I promise.”
Adam’s huff made it clear what he thought of a criminal’s promises.
“Just over here.” She walked five steps, until she stood under the drugstore’s green awning.
Adam followed, keeping a wary eye on Nacho.
“I’ll pay you for the magazine. And you can keep it.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I know it isn’t.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, so Adam would have to lean in to hear. “But I just got him out of a group home today. His mom died—our mom died—two weeks ago.” She set her face in grieving lines, and looked at him from under her lashes. Tears? No, better not push it. “Just this once, could you give him a break? He’s only ten, and he’s been in that group home since the day we buried our mom. That’s bound to have messed him up, you know?”
Adam shook his head. “I’m sorry for your loss. Really. But I’ve had a rash of petty thefts, and if it weren’t for Sin, he’d have gotten away with it. I have to make an example of him.”
She touched his forearm. “I’ll vouch for him. I’ll make him come in through the back door...”
He jerked his arm away as if she’d pinched it. “He is not living here.”
His distaste sparked tinder—the dried remnants of every slight that lay scattered in her memory. The behind-the-hand giggles, the “slut spawn” taunts, the smug smile of a blonde girl with a pig nose—they all caught fire in a whoosh.
Her hands fisted. “Oh, yes. He is.” It came out as the growled warning of a junkyard dog.
A muscle worked at the side of Adam’s jaw. When he leaned in, Priss was suddenly aware of his size. She felt the brush of his fury on her face. “Oh, no. He isn’t.”
“Read your lease. It bans pets, not kids.”
The spasm in his hands told her just when he realized he’d been had. His eyes narrowed to slits. “You lied to me!”