Tara pressed her lips together. “You need the money that much?”
“Yes,” I said. There was no need to elaborate.
She nodded. “Fucking Mike.”
Exactly.
Tara stayed with Charlie when I left. They were eating pizza that she had bought and Cassie came down to watch some DVDs that Tara and Charlie rented in town. Tara was a good friend, and it made me feel even worse about not telling her that I worked at the tavern. She texted me later that Charliefell asleep with the toothbrush in his hand, sitting on the toilet lid. She sent a picture next, and I burst out laughing.
“What’re you looking at?” Roy demanded. I showed him my phone.
“That’s Cassie’s boy?”
I looked at him curiously. “How do you know Cassie?”
“She used to come in here.”
“I can’t picture Cassie in here. No offense!” I added quickly.
“Used to come looking for her husband. I heard she’s sick,” Roy said.
When I had come in to apply for the job, I hadn’t said why I needed it, just that I needed it badly. I wondered who had told Roy about her illness.
“Yeah, she is,” I told him. “Cancer.”
“How bad is it?”
I had been telling myself that she would be fine for a long time. I took a breath. “It’s bad,” I admitted to Roy. “Pretty bad.”
“I haven’t seen Mike in a while.”
“He’s gone. I don’t know where.” No one had directly asked me about Mike, but I was sure there had been an interesting whisper campaign around town.
Roy made a noise like a snort and a cough combined. “Had to throw him out of here a few times.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded somnolently. “Time to get back to work, sugar,” he said. “You got customers.” Our magical bonding moment was over.
Tara hung out with us on Sunday too, chatting with Cassie (well, sometimes fighting with Cassie), helping me with some laundry, and watching Charlie so I could make a drive to Costco (using Mike’s membership card, so at least he was still good for something). Costco was something of a refuge for me. I wandered down every aisle, trying every sample, looking at books, considering which small appliances I would need in my dream kitchen, pricing out booze and huge pieces of fancy cheese for if I ever had a party, and studying the jewelry to separate the “ok, I would wear that” from the tacky.
It was physically difficult for me to hand the cash to the checker when I got to the front of the line. “Miss?” he asked me, giving the bills a tug.
“Sorry,” I told him, forcing my fingers to relinquish the cash.
The whole time I shopped, Tara had kept up a steady stream of texts to me of second-hand information from Diego about the meet, so I didn’t look at my phone when I heard it ding in the parking lot until I was buckled into the Bronco.
Then my stomach did a little flip. Not Tara.
Luke I was driving to the airport and heard someone singing The Devil Went Down to Georgia.
MeHuh??
A picture of Danny Bob popped up on my screen, and I burst out laughing.
LukeThis guy was in the back seat. Is Charlie doing ok without him?
I sent him the picture of Charlie asleep on the toilet lid.
