“Yeah. So, when you coming up here for a visit? I miss you.”
“Soon,” he said. “Hey, Di?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got a better question for you.”
I laughed. “What’s that?”
“When are you going to open up Carolina Di’s Boils?”
I smiled. Opening a tiny restaurant had been my dream since I was a little girl. I knew I wanted to cook Carolina Boils. Some people called them Steamer Pots. As you can imagine, there are any number of slightly disgusting sounding names a big brother can figure out to call a restaurant incorporating either “boil” or “steamer.”
I’d always loved to cook, and taking care of people was what made me happiest. I had visions of this stand on the beach where people would wait in line for baskets of my simple fresh seafood. Phillip would be in a chef’s hat lining the red-and-white-checked cardboard baskets with paper and dishing my boils into them, filling up cups with ice. He wouldn’t like serving the customers, but I could do that part. He would have a job and a paycheck all his own. I thought he’d like that.
Charles believed in me, even when the chips were down. And I knew then that I couldn’t tell him. I just couldn’t. I’d never asked him for anything, and I didn’t want to start now. I’d had to borrow $1,000 from Elizabeth a few years back to keep from starving and being on the street, and I still felt ashamed about it every day. She didn’t give me a hard time about it or anything, but still. Sometimes pride is all a girl’s got left. “Damn, Charles. Why’d you have to move all the way toAsheville? Why not just Raleigh or something?” I asked, changing the subject. It broke my heart how far away that dream of my own place seemed.
He chuckled. “You know as well as I do that if it ain’t the beach or the mountains, it ain’t worth living in.”
I laughed in agreement, though I would’ve been happy to have anywhere to live right now.
I couldn’t face the idea of going to the shelter, so for tonight I settled on setting up camp in the Impala, which had a big enough backseat. I could get some fast food for dinner, take a walk on the beach, and then, when it got good and dark, park at the beach access down the street from Gray’s house where I’d been earlier and take me a little snooze. And I’d do the same thing I’d always done: I’d worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
I wiped away the tears staining my cheeks. No use crying over spilt milk or spoilt men or the rest of this mess. I knew as good as my own backside in the mirror that tomorrow the sun was going to come out just like always. And a new day can change everything.
I checked my phone again, just to make sure Gray Howard hadn’t called about the job. I didn’t expect her to work miracles or anything, but I figured if anyone could pull strings down at Meds and More, it was someone like her. The silence made me think that maybe she hadn’t gone and talked to Bill after all. I drove slowly down the street, past Mr. Marcus’s house,past the water, down to Gray’s house. I was planning to pull all the way to the end of the street, where there weren’t any houses, and scope out whether I could park and sleep there. Cops didn’t patrol the nice areas a whole lot because nothing much happened in them anyway. But when I turned my head, I did a double take.
There in Gray’s driveway was a man lying on the ground, on his stomach, a huge box beside him. There’s something that happens to a body when it seems like somebody else is in trouble. And that’s what happened to me. I threw the car in park, jumped out, and ran to him. “Should I call nine-one-one?” I screamed.
He scrambled to his feet. He was a nice-looking boy, probably around his early twenties, in jeans and a sports coat, with this big, goofy smile.
“Oh, sorry,” he said in an accent that meant he wasn’t from around here. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He held up his arm. “One of my cuff links fell under the car and I was just looking for it.”
I put my hand up to my heart trying to slow its beating.
“I’m Trey,” he said, reaching out his hand to shake mine. “Gray’s assistant.”
I nodded. “I’m Diana.” I smirked. “The woman she got fired.”
I didn’t expect him to know what I was talking about, so I was taken aback when he said, “Ohhhh. She felt awful about that. I was on the phone with her when she was going to the store to try to get your job back.”
So, shehadgone down to the drugstore. And she hadn’t called me. That couldn’t mean good news.
He picked up the box with some effort and, handing me a key, said, “Hey, do you think you could open the back door for me?”
There was something unsettling about that. “Oh, um… I don’t think it would be right.”
He smiled, his eyes gleaming. “What wouldn’t be right is for me to drop an entire case of decadent rosé.”
I looked around to see if anyone was watching, then followed him to the back door, put the key in, and turned the knob. I didn’t walk inside, but I could see towels strewn about on the pair of matching sofas on either end of the fireplace. There were cups on the side table, dishes on the coffee table.
“Good Lord,” I said.
Trey nodded. “Oh, I know. Gray is brilliant, but she’s a total slob.”
I’ve always been real picky about having everything in its place and all that, and it killed me to see this house I used to clean in such a state of disarray. I couldn’t stop myself from walking into the kitchen, where it just kept getting worse. There were dishes all stacked up in the sink, mail scattered around, some kind of fake milk still on the counter from the morning—surely spoilt now.
She was a grown woman, but she wasn’t living like it. I didn’t owe her anything. Hell, she owedme. But I can’t stand a mess. Just like my sister, Elizabeth, when I see it, I clean it. I planned just to get a handle on the dishes in the sink, but I couldn’t leave the counters like that. And then those damptowels on those white linen sofas… And Trey was coming in and out, in and out, carrying groceries and papers and saying things like, “Gray never has any food in the house,” and, “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks to clean this place so I don’t have to.”
