He said, “That you’re here to cover for him.”
I was taking that apart for meaning when he pushed off the wall and said, “You have a good day, Miss Devine. You and…allyour pets.”
29
Had Detective Aycock been calling Alex my guard dog? Or my lapdog?
Both were absurd. Since I was the one beingkept. So much for the jokes, Detective.
Of course that wasn’t great either, because if Alex was “keeping” me in the way some people had probably suggested to Aycock, then Alex would have had an even better reason to keep Joey from coming back around.
My head hurt.
And where was Alex? Ned could run the kitchen without Pascal, but he never ran the till, didn’t know how.
I opened the doors to the pub and let the dogs loose. The place was still dark.
“Ned?”
I took the dogs through to the back and up the stairs. I threw them a couple of Wufers each, keeping my fingers well clear, then went back down to the pub. Ned still hadn’t come through.
I’d seen him, hadn’t I? It was hard to tell people in winter gear apart, of course. But Ned had that patient, loose-jointed walk. Not a hurry left to be had, especially when you needed him to hustle.
I poured a Coke with the soda gun and sipped at it, letting a few customers try the door up front and go away confused. Quin, probably. Let him find another Saturday office for whatever it was he was gearing up to sell us.
Next door, there were a few halfhearted bangs but I couldn’t get up the ire to go tangle with whoever was making the mess over there. I stared at the bar phone, wondering if I should call Alex and warn him about the damage I’d seen over there. I wasn’t sure what he’d do, though, and we couldn’t afford any more conflict right now. Detective Aycock’s visit—that little twitch of a grin that Alex and I were “covering” for each other—had put me on notice.
Because he wasn’t wrong.
Alex had certainly been covering for me, at least, room and board. And now I was shielding him. How had we come to this?
Joey.He’s the one who left me. Why couldn’t he just stay gone?
But that was probably the meanest thought I’d ever had.
Someone tugged at the vestibule door. I looked up as a shadow moved across the front window.
But really, why hadn’t he stayed away from here? Because… because he had a reason. Quite a good reason to see me, Heather had told Detective Aycock. Aycock just hadn’t said what it was.
I stared at the phone again, but there was no way around it. I had to make another trip to the suburbs. I had to see Joey’s sister in person, even if I had nothing but dread about doing it.
Well, at least a pregnant lady probably wouldn’t pull a gun on me. Right?
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER,I watched the 68 bus trundle away toward the far northwest suburbs. My confidence receded along with it.
I had met Joey’s younger sister, Heather, and her husband, Sachin, lots of times, of course. I’d spent the last two years celebrating holidays with them, birthdays. The last time I saw them, we’d met at theirfavorite neighborhood Italian place, the one I’d seen from the bus. After dinner we’d walked a block or two to their house for coffee, dessert—and an ad for married bliss, I’d thought snarkily.
That’s when Heather had dropped the news. They were having a baby.
Joey was so happy, but I could see the layer of envy below it. His younger sister was already married, had already bought a house. Had a career that didn’t involve trampolines at all. And now would start building her family.
Maybe I was a little mad at her, because I knew he couldn’t be.
Anyway, when Joey and I returned to our apartment that night, instead of staying over at Heather’s as we’d planned, we fought. About where we were going, or not. About how stiff I was around the topics of family, home, career. Thefuture.
That was a few months ago. I hadn’t been back to Heather and Sachin’s since.
I didn’t actually know their address. I scratched along the salted sidewalks to the Italian place and stood on the street corner, wishing I had called ahead. I gazed down the street, a line of tidy, identical houses fanning out into the distance.
