Aaron’s fitful sleep was disturbed for good just past seven in the morning, when Charlie turned up with Lennox again.
“Call me if you hear anything,” she told him.
“You going to work?” Aaron asked, eyeing her diner uniform.
“I have bills, Aaron,” Charlie said. “I don’t get to burn my bridges in this town. Not until I have to.”
Aaron didn’t like her answer, but neither of them had heard from Quinn yet. They were stuck waiting until they did, so what did it matter if Charlie worked a shift at the diner while they killed time? He nodded. “Okay.”
“If anything happens…”
“I’ll call you,” Aaron said. “I know.”
Charlie climbed back into her car and drove away.
Lennox watched her, his nose wrinkled, and his fingers gripping the straps of his backpack tightly.
* * * *
It took Aaron about two hours to realize he had nothing to feed a kid. Or himself, either. The few slices of bread he had left were half stale and half moldy, and he didn’t even have anything for the kid to drink except tap water.
“Let’s go to the grocery store,” he said, and Lennox grinned and scrambled to his feet.
Aaron remembered his last trip to the grocery store, and how he’d been juggling his crutches and his grocery bags, and what a trial it had been. Today he was wearing his prosthetic, and Lennox was happily lugging their basket of soda, bread, peanut butter, and snacks. Aaron pretended not to notice when Lennox slid a pack of Junior Mints into the basket.
The sudden flash of memory hit him hard.
Ten years ago, in this same store, and this exact same aisle. Watching Quinn, a too-innocent-to-be-real expression on his face, pick up a pack of candy and slide it into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.
Aaron’s jaw had dropped.
“What are you gonna do, sheriff’s kid?” Quinn had asked in an undertone, eyes dancing with mischief. “You gonna call your daddy?”
A thrill—part outrage, part desire—had rushed through him. And later, he and Quinn had shared the candy in the gully off Albertson Road, trading candy and kisses back and forth, grinding against each other until they came in their jeans.
Aaron blinked, and stared at Quinn’s kid. Jesus. Quinn had akid—strange how Aaron sometimes almost forgot, then it came back for another hit in his gut.
Lennox was no MacGregor. He blinked guiltily up at Aaron, his hand wavering over the Junior Mints in the basket. “I can…I can put them back?”
“Keep ‘em,” Aaron said. “Hell, get another box.”
Lennox grinned broadly, and put another box in the basket. “Thanks, Uncle Aaron!”
“Uncle Aaron,” someone said from behind him.
Aaron turned quickly, his heart racing. Shit. It was Jimmy MacGregor, standing right here in the candy aisle of the local grocery store like it was any other day, and his father wasn’t lying in a hospital bed in Vegas right now. Like Jimmy hadn’t put him there.
Aaron resisted the urge to reach out and pull Lennox closer. You didn’t show weakness or fear. Not with a guy like Jimmy MacGregor. That had been true since elementary school.
“Cute,” Jimmy said, a crooked grin breaking out on his face. “Real cute, Larsen.”
“Hey, Jimmy,” Aaron said. “It’s been a while.”
“Sure has, sheriff’s kid.”
When Quinn used to call him that, there had always been a note of teasing challenge in the words, like Quinn was saying it to rile Aaron up, but not in a cruel way. There’s none of that in the way that Jimmy said it. Jimmy wielded the words like a knife, knowing that they’d wound. Wanting them to draw blood and leave scars.
Jimmy looked rough. He had deep lines around his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth. There were shadows under his eyes that looked permanent, and his teeth were stained. Nicotine and caffeine or something worse, Aaron had no idea.
