“I wish to see you gone.Tally ho, good potheads, I do believe this is the end. As it should be. Cheese shop is that way. You should check it out.”
“Ah, I’m?—”
“Lactose intolerant? I know that about you too.”
My head might be spinning. This woman can quoteIn the Weedsand knows my stomach cannot digest cheese, but nothing about her suggests she’s a fan.
There’s likely another explanation, and this one has me smiling again. “You must know Lana.”
My ex—the boys’ mother, who’s still one of my best friends, and who’s rather tied up with family issues, hence my summer in her hometown to be the primary caregiver for the boys—she doesn’t mince words.
Good or bad.
It’s perfectly fine. I’m aware my shortcomings exist, and I’m very comfortable with forgiving myself for them.
Though this situation is a little more difficult than most.
This may be the first time someone has been arrested because of me, and I dislike that immensely.
Especially as she was very likely innocent in the whole ordeal.
She continues to frown at me. “Do I know who Lana is? Yes. Do I know her personally? No.”
I open my mouth.
Close it.
And try once more. “Ms. Best, I’d like to apologize?—”
“Sure. Whatever. All’s forgiven.”
All does not sound forgiven. “Is it?”
She squeezes her eyes shut, then sighs long and loud when she opens them again, as though my face is the last in a string of very bad things about her day.
“It is if forgiving you means you’ll let me try to salvage the rest of this day and get back to opening my bus to sell my fish,” she says.
I wince to myself. “So it doesn’t go bad. Of course.”
Daphne coughs again, and this time it’s accompanied by adick.
Bea shoots her the same kind of look Lana regularly gives the boys—half-frustration, half-exhaustion.
“Well, he is,” Daphne whispers. “Apologies won’t pay for the fish he stuck you with.”
Heat once again gathers at the base of my neck.
Rather doubt it’s because of the summer breeze.
More because I’m realizing Bea might be in the same kind of spot in which I’ve found myself more than once over the past fifteen or twenty years.
That is to say, in a financial pickle.
But this time, it’s because of me. “And naturally, I’ll reverse the fraud report. My accountant must have made it.”
Did I mention the suspicious part of Bea’s gaze? Because that’s aimed fully at me now.
“Will you?” she says.
