“You can put that on the floor if you want,” I offer. It’s the only thing she has that’s dry right now.
She hesitates for a moment. “Uh, no thanks, he’s fine.”
He’s?
Her backpack meows.
“Clover. What the fuck is in your backpack?” My tone is straightforward, and I level her with a stare.
She acts completely innocent as she turns the backpack around.
It does have a window.
And a fluffy orange cat.
“Beckett, meet Purrlock Holmes. He’s my cat.”
I audibly groan.
“You have a cat in this truck and didn’t tell me?”
“You owe a dollar to the swear jar, Daddy. Can I see the kitty?” A tiny, sweet voice pipes up from my backseat.
I’m still locked on Clover’s face and see her eyes widen. By a lot. She looks in the backseat and sees my six-year-old there, happy as a clam, and smiles at her.
“Of course you can! And he owes a whole dollar? Wow! That’s a lot of money.”
She turns the backpack around as my daughter explains to her that the f-word is a dollar because it’s— in her words— a “doopsy”. Even when I try to tell her the word is “doozy”, she’s not having it.
“You’re right, it is a doopsy.” Clover leans over the console in between my seat and hers, plops the cat backpack down next to the booster seat, and turns to face me.
“Beckett, what the fuck is in your backseat?” She whispers, barely audible to even me.
I clear my throat this time, mimicking her answer, my turn in the hot seat.
“Clover, meet Lennon. She’s my kid.”
Clover’s eyebrows scrunch together as she mockingly uses the tone I just used on her.
“You have a kid in this truck and didn’t tell me?”
I put the truck in reverse and don’t respond. Only the sound of Lennon talking to Purrlock fills the truck for a few minutes. We drive through town and Clover watches out of the window. When I don’t turn at the last chance red light, as the locals call it, her head whips towards me.
“Where are we going, Beckett?”
She sounds slightly alarmed, which is ridiculous. I’ve known her our whole lives, and my kid is in the backseat talking to her cat. Those sound like wildly inconvenient things when it comes to murdering someone, and I tell her that.
I turn my head towards her briefly at the stop sign before the road turns gravel.
“You’re going to crash with me.”
CLOVER
Ilaugh, and not a cute, quirky laugh. Honestly, it could probably be classified as the perfect example of a Canadian goose honk.
“Sure, Beck. We are best friends, after all. I’ll just stay at your house,” I snort.
His grip tightens on the wheel, and I see his jaw tick as we pass under the last remaining streetlights on the road leading us out of town.
