At the Quiet Edge(10)
Whatever else he’d been, Jones had been a good father when Everett was little. And Everett had missed him terribly those first couple of years, suffering nightmares at night and racing to peer hopefully out the window at the sound of unexpected visitors during the day.
Lily wasn’t sure he remembered Jones at all anymore. She couldn’t remember anything about her childhood before kindergarten.
“Hey there, Lily!” a soft voice called.
She spun to see Nour walking out of the big garage door of her shop’s loading area. Nour, the opposite of her wife, was quiet and studious and introverted. She was softness personified with her piles of black curls and plump shape. She had been born in Egypt and had learned some woodworking from her grandfather before moving to the States at eleven. What an age to be dropped into a strange, new world. Everett didn’t have it so bad, surely.
“Have you seen Everett ride by?” Lily called out.
“Not today! But he dropped by yesterday to RSVP for the crawfish boil!”
“Oh . . . right. Of course.”
The damn crawfish boil. Lily had gotten into such a habit of excusing herself from any invitations that Sharon pulled off an end run around her. First she’d asked when Lily was done with classes for the semester, and then she’d invited her and Everett over for a crawfish boil in mid-May. And she’d done it in front of Everett.
Lily had murmured that she’d check her schedule, though she had no social life at all and certainly no money for a vacation. Everett had asked her about it three times and then dropped it. Now she knew why he hadn’t bothered asking again.
Apparently they were going to the crawfish boil.
“Bring a side dish or dessert or beer, it doesn’t matter. We’ll have all the essentials.”
“Will do.”
Lily waved and turned to carry on with her search, but as soon as she stepped off the hill, she let her frown snap back into place. It wasn’t that she wanted Everett to live in isolation. She just wanted it for herself.
When Sharon had realized who Lily was, she’d asked about her ex-husband a few times until Lily had managed to carefully orchestrate distance. She imagined what Sharon must have said about her to every person who stepped into the store. She would have been thrilled beyond measure to be in such close proximity to a walking scandal like Lily. Lily’s only recourse had been to avoid Sharon like the plague.
Everett, of course, had wandered over to their shop often, craving any friendly company near his lonely home, and they’d welcomed him with open arms.
Face screwed up in frustration, Lily circled back around to the end of the road and peered as far into the distance as she could, searching for Everett’s bike. And then searching for strange cars, just in case. One hatchback approached and turned into the lot across the street to park in front of the plumbing supply place. Probably just a contractor, though everything looked suspicious to her after that visit from the detective.
She finally gave up and headed back inside to wrap up her work and preheat the oven for dinner and for the cookies that felt suddenly vital to saving her relationship with her only child.
Still, the walk had done her good. She felt calmer now. Everett was growing more distant because he was supposed to at his age, and their fight was a blip in their life together, not a tragic turn. After all, things had been perfectly rosy between her and Jones when their life had blown up in her face. She should see calm happiness as more of a warning than a mild argument might be.
Ten minutes into reviewing delinquent accounts, her memories of the argument were blotted out by her tortured stress over customers who were going to lose their belongings. She hated to watch the moment lumbering slowly toward her as she sent out warning after warning, silently begging each person to respond. She’d lost nearly everything once, and the scars burned when she got too close to other people’s hardships.
When her phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number, her distracted brain served her the briefest flash of Everett’s bike wrecked somewhere, but then she saw the text.
It’s in your mailbox.
What? What was in her mailbox? She had just opened her email app to search for new notifications when she sat straight with a sudden jerk. “Oh,” she said on a breath. That was in her mailbox.
Lily sprang up and walked as fast as she could out the door and toward the large black box perched crookedly near the road. Another repair on her list of things to fix. Heart hammering, she opened the off-kilter door and drew out an unaddressed manila envelope.
She started to tuck it under her sweater, then glanced toward the front window of the upholstery shop and decided hiding it would look more suspicious. She was allowed to get envelopes, just like she was allowed to have visitors late at night. What she wasn’t allowed to do was use a client’s property as if it were her own.
What if Sharon had seen a strange car pull up and leave an envelope? What if she was putting little details together and passing them around like treats to every friend and acquaintance? Lily could lose her job and her home, and all her careful plans to get a better job, a better home, a better life for her son.
By the time she made it back to her office, she was wiping nervous sweat off her forehead again.
Unlike her ex-husband, she was clearly not cut out for a life of crime.
Worried that another customer would arrive or Everett would choose the worst moment to make his return, Lily quickly sliced open the heavily taped envelope and looked inside. Then she did tuck it beneath her sweater before she grabbed her keys and locked up.