“Yes,” Charlie said. He lowered his voice. “Crap.”
Oh. That C word.
“The D word, the E word…” he continued.
“Wait a minute, what’s the E word?” I demanded.
He thought for a second. “I guess there’s no E word. Maybe I’ll make one up.”
I left him to it.
∞
Tuesday morning I dug through my clothes to look for something marginally not a rag to wear to run with Annie. My running shoes, which I wore every day to the NGS for comfort, were equally worn out. It didn’t matter, I told myself. It was a track, not a fashion show.
Cassie had had a rough night, needing my help several times. I looked in the mirror and saw the dark circles under my eyes that never seemed to fade.
It didn’t matter. The customers at the NGS didn’t mind how ugly I looked.
I hadn’t heard from Martha’s cousin, and when she came in to the store, I asked if she knew anything about my car.
I could tell immediately that she had bad news. When Martha got nervous, she did a little head twitch, and she was twitching like a chicken now.
“Well, honey, I did hear from him. He wasn’t wanting to tell you…but he doesn’t think it’s worth it to fix the car.”
I sat down at the stool behind the register. “What do you mean?”
“Well, honey, it’s more than thirty years old. It needs more work than would be worth to put into it.” She twitched.
I started shaking my head. “I don’t need it to be perfect, just running. I’m sure—” She looked grim. “Oh. Ok.” Breathe, I reminded myself.
“You can keep the Bronco until Carl’s brother comes back from Florida. That will give you some time,” Martha said. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
“Not your fault,” I mumbled.
“He’ll pay you some for the scrap,” she assured me.
“How much?”
She twitched hard. “He said maybe as much as a hundred.”
A hundred dollars. That would be my budget for a new car. “Martha, it’s ok. I owe you big for loaning the Bronco to me and I owe your cousin too. I’ll figure it out.”
So it was the perfect afternoon to go for a run. I had the car anxiety to work off, and I had Cassie’s oncology appointment the next day to anticipate. I changed quickly in the ladies’ locker room, then checked on Charlie before heading to the track. Darby looked up into the bleachers at me and gave me a thumbs-up. She and Tara had chatted the night before and she was going to be Charlie’s wing-man at practice. Wing-girl.
Annie was already there waiting beside the track, twisting herself into a crazy stretch. “Hi, Emily! I did yoga today and I’m feeling sooo limber.” She grabbed her ankle and put it somewhere near her ear. “You should come with me some day. The teacher is awesome.”
Sure, I had a lot of time for yoga. “That sounds fun,” I answered. “How far do you usually run?”
“I just go as far as I can in the time we have. I should warn you, I’m really slow!”
I was terrified that her idea of slow was a six-minute mile, but we actually did well pacing together. It had been about seven months since I had run, but all that time on my feet at Roy’s had apparently helped me to stay in shape, and I managed to keep up the whole practice. It helped that Annie kept up a running stream of conversation to distract me from the pain. She was fun to talk to, even as it became clear that we really had nothing in common. She talked about her kitchen renovation, planning a trip to the Caribbean, mean moms at school (we did actually share that problem), swim team responsibilities, her killer Pilates instructor. The demands on her time, which mostly seemed to be exercise classes, driving Macdara to her activities, and supervising the housekeeper. But despite all our differences, she had such a cheerful, happy way about her—she was easy to like.
She told me about moving back to northern Michigan after being away to a boarding school for high school out east, then in California to college at Pepperdine. “I had only lived here during the summers for so many years, and I still feel like I don’t really know anyone that well. All my besties are in New York and Connecticut and LA. It’s a little…isolated up here. But I stay really busy,” she assured me.
“I know what you mean,” I huffed. “I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school here, and they’ve moved away. But there are some really nice people in town.” As I said that, I tried to imagine her hanging out with Martha, or listening to Tara’s foul-mouthed stories. I didn’t see it happening.
“My husband travels a lot for—for business.” Her voicesounded funny and I peeked at her. “He’s from Chicago originally and he’s only here for me. And I’m only here to be near Daddy, because he needs me.”
