And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(62)
The Alco had one shelf of books and no David Copperhead. Sonsofbitches had everything from tubs of cheese puffs to salt licks for cattle, but they didn’t have the one goddamn book in the world he needed. As he rolled toward the pharmacy, he realized he should have gone to the library first, before he had a trunk full of frozen food.
At the back of the store, he picked up a new toothbrush and some shampoo that looked like it was for ladies and smelled like coconut and lime when he flipped up the top and sniffed. He bought more hydrogen peroxide and bandages and the biggest tube of antibiotic ointment they had.
He rolled the motorized cart up to the pharmacy window. A tall, skinny man with gray hair parted on one side asked if he could help him.
“I wanna buy insulin. The cheap kind.”
The pharmacist looked at Emmett over the top of his glasses. Emmett saw him scan the contents of his shopping basket. Emmett looked, too. It was a Jekyll and Hyde mix of the absolute best and absolute worst foods for a diabetic.
“Did your doctor call in the prescription?”
“Not the prescription insulin. The other.”
“I have that if that’s what you want. Are you out of your regular? If insurance is an issue, I can try to get you cleared for more of your regular brand.”
Emmett’s heart was racing. This wasn’t his normal pharmacy. He usually went to the drugstore in town where all he had to do was give them his name and make his copay. No chitchat.
“I don’t… I just want what I asked for.”
The pharmacist nodded. “Did you want the N, the R, or the seventy-thirty mix?”
This the girl had prepared him for. She’d told him what to get. “The last one. Seventy thirty.”
“How many vials?”
“How much are they?”
“Twenty-nine dollars each.”
“One. And a box of syringes.”
The pharmacist disappeared behind his shelves and came back a minute later with two boxes. He jabbed a finger at the monitor in front of him and then scanned the bar codes on the insulin and the syringes.
“These qualify as covered items for payment with funds from an HSA or an FSA if you have a card.”
Emmett didn’t know what the hell half of those words meant. “Just credit card,” he said.
“Are you a member of our rewards club? Over-the-counter drugs count toward your points.”
For fucksake. Emmett sighed and leaned sideways in his cart, grimacing as he lifted his hip and reached for his wallet. “Yes, I’m in the goddamn club.”
***
He left the motorized cart in the store and limped his groceries to his car and put them in the back seat. Sitting behind the wheel, he pawed his shirt pocket for cigarettes and watched as the owner of the silver hatchback parked directly in front of him approached her car. It was the tall woman in cutoff shorts with veiny legs. She had short gray hair that matched her T-shirt. On one arm he saw brightly colored flowers tattooed on her old flesh.
He recognized her just as she got behind the wheel of her car and saw him staring from inside his. The mutual recognition felt like a shock wave that would have knocked them both down had they been standing.
It was Myra.
Emmett froze, trying to comprehend all the ways the woman across from him looked different but was definitely still his ex-wife.
Myra acted like she couldn’t get away fast enough. He watched her fumble for the seat belt, then let it go, never taking her eyes off of him, as she backed up and drove away.
***
It was four thirty when Emmett parked next to the handicap spot in front of the library. He’d lived his whole adult life in Sandy Lake and never once had he been inside the library. Not the old one in the two-story brick building paid for by Andrew Carnegie, and not when it was spread out through several classrooms in the decommissioned elementary school, and not this new glass and steel version that looked like cells in a honeycomb.
His back and leg were killing him as he stepped into the air-conditioned building and approached the three-sided central desk. A woman hiding behind a computer screen showed her face. It was his neighbor, Ruth.
He almost walked out right then. First Myra, now Ruth. Talk about ghosts from his past.
“My word. Emmett, what are you doing here? Can I help you find something?”
He wanted to say no and keep walking like he knew exactly where he was going. The pain in his left butt cheek was like something sharp had pierced him to the bone.
“I’m looking for David Copperhead,” he said.
Ruth cocked her head like she hadn’t heard him right.
“What?” he said. “That’s the name of a book, right?”
Ruth clasped her hands and smiled. “I think you mean David Copperfield. Such a great book. You really can’t do much better than Dickens. He’s a master storyteller.”
He followed her to another part of the library, down a narrow aisle between shelves of books. She knew where she was going based on how quickly she went right to the shelf with the Dickens books. “I’m afraid there’s just one problem,” she said as she ran a finger across several of the spines. “Unfortunately, all our copies are out. The AP English class at the high school is reading David Copperfield right now. They’ve got all our copies tied up.” She looked at him through thick glasses with an expression he couldn’t decipher because he was frozen in place.