It’s bizarre, given there hasn’t been a woman who has elicited such a response in me since I was sixteen and shut it down for good. Apparently, curly hair, wild eyes, eighties getups, and pumpkin purses are my weak spots.
“I don’t disagree.” I manage, somehow, to sound like I’m not eighty-five-point-nine-thousand degrees of boiling desire warring with confusion on the inside. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. I sincerely hope you find what you’re looking for. Word to the wise, it won’t be with my son.”
Sadly, Reginald takes after his mother. He doesn’t have a bone in his body that isn’t self-absorbed. I’m not throwing myself down the rabbit hole of wishing things could be different again or wondering what Reginald would have been like if I could have been involved in raising him. I could have fought harder, but it wasn’t just a matter of court. It was the damage Candice threatened to do to her own son in order to get her way.
My opinion of his attitude very likely isn’t even relevant. I’ve doubted it until today when this woman’s performance confirmed it.
Gerald holds out a hand and makes a sweeping motion that saysthis way, please, let’s not make a scene here; it’ll all be alright.
She scowls at me as she turns, but it’s clearly not enough. She flips me the bird over her shoulder at the last minute, right before the door closes.
Then, it flings back open to a grunt of, “Miss, please!”
Amalphia sticks her head around the crack. “Can I at least borrow twenty dollars? I have no money to get back home.”
I’m assuming she means Harrisburg, but really, it could be anywhere. The last update I heard from Candice on Reg’s whereabouts was four months ago when she was due to give me one.
A nasty sensation that feels like inhaling pungent smoke grips my chest and trickles down into my belly. No. I refuse to consider this. It’s just an encore to the main act.
“I’m sorry, no.”
“Right. Any amount of money is only enabling.” She screws up her face. “So…I guess asking for a job since I’ve been fired from mine is out of the question?”
“Come with me!” Gerald practically pleads.
“I’ll go when I’m good and ready,” Amalphia snaps, but she doesn’t snarl, stomp her foot, or make a production of it as Gerald puts a hand behind her back without touching her and corrals her away from the door.
“If you come now, I’ll see what I can do about getting you some money for gas.”
I sigh and make a mental note to reimburse Gerald later. The money will be coming out of his own pocket. He’s a bleeding heart, easily taken in by ruses. He’s a better man than I am. He cares about people at a level that’s almost unfathomable to me. He doesn’t just work here. Aside from having a large family with kids that aren’t even his, he volunteers at a soup kitchen in the heart of the city and is involved with several inner-city youth programs.
Once Gerald wrangles Amalphia out without so much as touching her and closes the door tightly behind him, I snatch up the folders I need for my meeting, grab my phone, and walk briskly down the hall, now probably twenty minutes late. Coffee will only hold out so long. Everyone is probably that extra degree of surly that no amount of apologizing will make up for.
It’s not until late afternoon when the question I’ve been trying to push to the fringes of my mind finally explodes in flashing neon behind my eyes.
What if Amalphia wasn’t lying?
I ruminate on that rather uncomfortably as if that thorn has lodged itself in my own hard-to-reach, sun-don’t-shine spot. A sick feeling churns in my gut. I was so convinced the whole thing was an exceptional act, butwhatif? What if it was so exceptionally good because it wasreal?
I had to calm down long enough to see it, but now that I’ve gone there in my head, I can’t tunnel my way out. All I can hear and see is a young woman pleading with me to save the people she cares about from the bone-breaking fish feeders.
It was an act. It had to be.
But what if it wasn’t?
Thinking about it makes my chest do something I don’t like. It takes me an extra half an hour, but I do something I very rarely do and usually need to psych myself up to a tremendous degree for.
I call Candice.
Chapter three
Amalphia
After I got back from Pittsburgh, I met up with my parents. They were almost out of gas, and none of us even had so much as couch change to scrape together. My mom was losing her cool. She’d seen the inside of far too many public toilets with Granny, her crab needed its regular habitat, she needed to check on her fish, and poor Booty Sue had her really wide eyes on. If you’ve ever met an anxious German Shepherd before, you justknow.
Finally, my parents made the hard call to head back home. There was no way they were letting Granny or me go back to our homes. We were better off sticking together. Power in numbers. A pack is harder to defeat and the rule of many.
We went back home and locked and barricaded the door.
