Page 9 of York

I didn’t need that little gut punch of guilt. But I plastered on a smile. “I do. That was a nice room.”

“When I get a room, I want purple.”

“Purple is a nice color.” And I liked that she said ‘when.’ I always tried to use those words. Not if. I wanted her to know the plan was always to get somewhere that was our own again. “Let’s go grab some of our stuff from the car, okay? Then we can have a little picnic for dinner.”

There was no budget for eating out, so everything we did was a picnic straight out of the cooler where I stored whatever groceries I’d picked up. Sometimes we ate at gas stations, parks, sides of the road. Thankfully, Denny didn’t have a lot of frame of reference for eating at tables and how that was the standard for most people.

One day, I reminded myself as I pulled out lunch meat and bread and started making sandwiches.

“Apple or carrots on the side?” I asked.

She eyed the apple, seeming to notice it was the only one, then told me carrots. Even though I knew apples were her favorite. She really was the sweetest damn kid.

“You know what? Can I have the carrots? I want my eyes to sparkle.”

“Okay,” she agreed, eagerly taking the apple in her chubby little hand.

The reality was, I would eat exactly one baby carrot and keep the rest for her for the next day. Money was running exceptionally low now that I had to drop money on the motel.

If York didn’t agree to help us, I was going to need to find work fast.

It wasn’t as easy as it had once been to find truly off-the-books jobs. Everything was done with apps these days. And the problem was, information online could be uncovered if someone was looking for it. And someone was clearly looking for me. It was harder still to find work I could do while I had Denny with me.

My best bet would be finding cleaning jobs. Florida would probably be pretty good for that work with all the vacation rentals around. I’d never had a problem getting paid in cash for cleaning work. I might even be able to snag some housesitting (and live-in pet-sitting) jobs, which would give me both a job and a free place to stay.

“What animal do you want to see?” Denali asked as she munched on a ham and cheese sandwich dipped in ranch dressing. Yep. Ranch. My child was a serious dip addict. Sometimes it was ranch, but it was also ketchup, honey mustard, barbecue sauce, marinara, or hummus. There wasn’t much she ate that she didn’t dip in something. Half of our cooler was full of bottles of sauce.

“Hmm. I think I’d like to see a white tiger, if they have one. Oh! Or an anteater. I think those are really cool.”

Denny’s nose wrinkled up. “They eat ants.”

“Yes, they do. With their super long tongue.”

“How long?”

“Like this long,” I said, spreading my arms to about a foot.

That got a fit of giggles as she stuck out her own tongue and measured it with her fingers.

“What animal will your friend like?”

“I don’t know! You should ask him when you meet him.”

Because we had such a nomadic life and she didn’t get a chance to interact with the same people often, I worried about her social skills, so I always tried to encourage her to speak to people when she came across them. She was pretty extroverted with fellow kids or women, but had gotten pretty skittish around men.

Who could blame her after what we’d been through? What she’d seen?

And I was stuck in this weird place because I couldn’t tell her that she didn’t need to be afraid of strange men. Because, fuck, she did. We did.

“Is he a nice man?” she asked, dipping her sandwich a few times in a row—a little nervous tick.

“He’s going to be very nice to you,” I assured her.

No, I didn’t know York. Not in more than a carnal way, at least. But I’d seen how he was looking at Denny in the car, heard the soft way he’d said, “She’s mine?”

He wasn’t going to be mean to her. Confused, maybe a little awkward, but not mean.

“And nice to you?” she asked, looking up with big brown eyes. I hated that I knew exactly what was running across her mind.