Page 53 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“What’s in there?”

“Pressure valve for your water heater.”

She stared at me. “How you know my water heater needed a pressure valve?”

“It was knocking.”

“I thought that was normal.”

“It’s not.”

She looked at the bag again with the expression of a woman being offered something she needed but hadn’t asked for, which meant she was deciding whether accepting it constituted any kind of debt. I waited.

“You know how to put that in?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you came over here at—” she checked the clock behind her. “Nine forty-seven at night to fix my water heater.”

“I had the part.”

She stepped back from the door and let me in without another word, but I knew there was more coming.

The water heater was in the utility closet off the kitchen. I had the old valve out in ten minutes, and the new one seated and pressure-tested in twenty. Delphine stood in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel over her shoulder, watching me work and occasionally offering commentary that was not technically helpful and that I did not respond to, which seemed to be the dynamic she preferred.

“You always carry plumbing parts around in your car?”

“No ma’am.”

“But you just happened to have this one.”

“I bought it.”

“For my house.”

“For your water heater.”

She made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite suspicion and went to the stove. By the time I came out of the utility closet and washed my hands at the kitchen sink, there was a bowl of rice and red beans on the counter.

“Sit down,” she said. Not an offer.

I sat down.

The beans were good. Not Sunday dinner good, but leftover good, which meant they’d had time to settle and the flavors had pulled together the way red beans do when you leave them alone for a day. I didn’t say any of that because she didn’t ask. I just ate.

Delphine sat across from me with her own bowl and read something on her phone, glasses down from her forehead now, scrolling with her thumb. The television in the next room was going low. The house had the particular quiet of a woman who had raised children and now lived alone and had made peace with both of those facts.

“You always eat this late?” she asked, not looking up from her phone.

“When I’m working.”

“What kind of work keeps a man out ’til ten o’clock on a weeknight.”

“The kind I do.”

“Mm.” She set her phone face-down. “Truth tells me you handling some business. She don’t say what kind. I don’t ask.”

“That’s kind of her.”