She moved in and out of view as she worked on the coffees. “So, what are you guys up to so early?” She paused and leaned to look out at me. “If you tell me you’re driving my niecehome, I’ll come through this window.”
“We’re going up to Portland,” Harper said with a laugh. “Bas has an appointment in a couple hours. Why the hell are you working on a Saturday morning? Don’t you have employees?”
“Bishop’s at a job site this morning, and the kids stayed the night over at Cecilia’s, so I figured I’d come in and get some inventory done,” Charlie yelled over the loud espresso machine. “I wasn’t going to fall back asleep anyway.”
“You should’ve laid in bed all morning,” Harper chastised. “You had the house to yourself!”
“I should’ve, huh?” Charlie said with a laugh, handing us our coffees. “Ah, well. Too late now.”
“How much do I owe you?” I asked, opening my wallet.
“For you two? On the house,” Charlie replied.
There was no fucking way. If she started giving away coffee for free to anyone she knew, she’d be closed in a month. I was pretty sure that club members were her largest customers by far. Pulling out a twenty-dollar bill, I stuffed it in the little tip jar.
“Thanks, Auntie,” Harper called. “Love you!”
“Love you, too,” Charlie said. She nodded to me in thanks for the tip. “Drive careful, guys.”
“We will,” Harp chirped as I rolled away from the window. She scooted gingerly back over to her seat and buckled up with one hand. “I didn’t think this through.”
“What’s that?” I asked, glancing at her as I took a sip of my coffee.
“This stupid truck doesn’t have any cup holders.”
I grinned as we pulled back onto the road.
“What kind of music do you like?” Harper asked as we pulled onto the freeway a few minutes later. “You want me to turn some on?”
“I’ll listen to anything,” I answered as she reached forward to mess with the radio.
“My dad should’ve put a stereo system in here,” she complained, flipping through the stations.
“Talked about it,” I replied. “Instead, I scrapped one from a wrecking yard in Albany.”
“You did?”
“He had me runnin’ all over the state for shit.” I scoffed. “Drove out to Vale for this seat. Woulda cost less and taken far less time to just reupholster the old one.”
“He’s so persnickety,” she complained. “But you have to admit it turned out pretty good.”
“Yeah, it did.”
“He’s lucky he has minions to do his bidding,” she said dryly. “Sending you almost to Idaho for a seat. Pfft.”
“I got paid,” I reminded her. “Worked out fine on my end.”
She found a classic rock station finally and leaned back in her seat. She was wearing a hoodie and baggy jeans with flowers all over them, and with a gun to my head I couldn’t have told you if I liked her better in the dress from the night before last. She was just gorgeous, no matter what she was wearing. Of course, I also had the benefit of knowing exactly what was beneath those clothes, so I was probably a little biased.
We were quiet for a while, drinking our coffee as the music played. I was glad she’d shown up that morning. If I’d been by myself, I wouldn’t have been able to think about anything but the appointment I was headed to. The closer it got to the meeting time, the more I felt suffocated by the past.
I hadn’t let myself miss Bernice. I hadn’t felt like I’d deserved even thinking of the woman who’d taken me into her home and raised me. Even the memory of my foster siblings had me teetering on the edge of depression for those first few years. But now, knowing that she’d still been thinking of me over a decade after I’d disappeared, had me reconsidering every decision I’d made back then.
“How you doing over there?” Harper asked quietly, turning her head to look at me. “Freaking out?”
“Nah, I’m fine,” I lied. “Ready to get this shit over with.”
“I can understand that,” she said. “Completely different scenario, but the day I left my job, I knew I was going to do it. I spent the whole morning freaking out about what I would say and how it would all go. Once I was done, I felt so much better, mostly because I was just glad that part was over.”
