ThankGodshe could drive the truck to work today. Otherwise she’d be insanely late.
She paused for a millisecond and listened.
She could hear her mom snoring softly in her bedroom.
She listened harder.
Only one warm body in there breathing, though. She stood on her toes and peered out the window. No blue Lexus parked out front.
She had a hunch it was only a matter of time, however, before Gary became a fixture.
Or her next stepdad.
She smiled ruefully. She could live with that. Because he’d probably be herlaststepdad. And John-Mark would probably like him.
That’s when she saw the note in the middle of the kitchen table. Speak of the devil. She had another hunch, and it wasn’t a good one.
She snatched it up.
Glo—my car broke down last night on the way to work and I had to hitchhike back to town. I had to walk all the way over here to borrow the truck or I’d miss work.
P.S. Then the truck broke down and I missed work anyway. It’s out on the highway by the sign that says “TITS.”
P.P.S. Truck Donegal picked me up when I was hitchhiking. He says to tell you hi.
P.P.P.S. I can’t miss any more days of work or...
And here he’d drawn a little stick figure of a guy getting his throat cut.Complete with “X”s over its eyes and arterial spray.
ARRRRGH.She squeezed her eyes closed and swore blackly under her breath.
God only knew punctuality was about the best she had to offer Sherrie and Glenn, at least as a waitress, and they deserved at least that much.
She was going to have to run—literally run—to work.
Still, she drew a smiling stick figure of a guy dangling from a noose, and wrote:
Hang in there, John-Mark.
Xoxo Glory
And even though he hadn’t drawn a rectangle, she left him twenty bucks and twelve cents. It was what she had left after she’d given Monroe twenty-five bucks and Giorgio ten bucks, and she’d given her sister forty bucks to help pay for the glasses the baby was going to need. Still, there was no question that having any money at all she could give away made her feel richer.
And then she crammed her feet into the old Skechers slides she kept by the front door, grabbed her keys, and bolted.
She ran the way she used to run as a kid, long breakneck strides, thundering down the dirt road, crashing through the long grass, dragging a hand for good luck on that elm tree, which by rights ought to have been scorched from the heat she and Eli had thrown off Tuesday, and then she practically hurdled the old white fence. She paused here to rope her hair into a sloppy knot of sorts on the nape of her neck and take a few gulping breaths. And then she ran all the way down Main Street the way Boomer Clark had that time he was drunk and had run screaming down the street claiming Bigfoot was chasing him, only it turned out just to be Lloyd Sunnergren’s big black Lab-Newfoundland mix, Hamburger, who was harmless and ecstatic to have someone to run with. When you met Hamburger, however, it was easy to see how Boomer might have gotten confused.
She paused on Main Street to breathe for about three seconds, then pushed open the door of the Misty Cat so hard the bells leaped like a cat o’ nine tails and almost lashed her in the tush. She looked about wildly, saw the broom, seized it, and began sweeping like a dervish to make up for being ten minutes late.
Sherrie had already pulled all the chairs down and she was wiping a table. She paused and watched Glory for a bemused moment. Then her mouth twitched.
“What does the nine stand for?”
“The wha...” She looked down. There was indeed a big number nine on the t-shirt she’d snagged off the sofa. Damned if she knew what that meant off the top of her head. Boys and their clothes.
“I thought a ten might be a little too conceited,” she improvised. Rather than confess she’d gotten dressed in six seconds in the middle of her living room about ten minutes ago.
Over from behind the grill, Giorgio shook his head to and fro, as if this was the saddest thing he’d ever heard.
