Don’t Let Me Go(31)

“I think it’s going to have to be cereal or eggs,” she said.

“Oh. That’s OK,” Grace said.

But it made her think again about this day sucking worse than most days, even if Billy didn’t think it sucked any more than any other. But then she reminded herself about the wood, and then she knew it wasn’t fair to think about it sucking, because it isn’t every day when somebody goes out and gets a dance floor for you.

“Can we have both?” Grace asked.

“Sure. Why not?”

Rayleen said it like she didn’t have any energy. Then she put crunchy oat cereal and an almost-empty carton of milk in front of Grace, and started breaking eggs into a bowl to scramble them, and she did all of it in that same way, like she didn’t have any energy.

Grace poured a huge bowl of cereal, because there was lots, a whole box, but she only used a little milk, because she wanted to save some for Rayleen.

Meanwhile Rayleen was standing at the stove, watching this over her shoulder.

“You want more milk than that, don’t you?”

“What about you?”

“I’m just having scrambled eggs. But thank you. That was very nice.”

“I can finish it? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Rayleen said.

And she didn’t say one other thing until quite a bit after she sat down at the table with two plates of scrambled eggs.

“Is there any ketchup?” Grace asked.

Rayleen got up and got her a bottle of ketchup out of the fridge.

“Thanks,” Grace said, and started squeezing it over her eggs.

And Rayleen said, “Whoa. That’s a lot of ketchup.”

Then they just ate, and were quiet after that.

? ? ?

About fifteen minutes after they’d finished eating, right around the time Rayleen had the last of the dishes dried and put away, they heard a knock at the door.

Grace ran and opened it, but there was nobody there.

She stepped out into the hall, still in her three pairs of socks. She looked both ways, but the only thing she saw was a big piece of plywood. Very big. Taller than she was. It was leaning against the wall near Rayleen’s door.

She turned to run inside, to tell Rayleen, but smacked right into her immediately.

“Well, that was fast,” Rayleen said.

“But a piece of wood can’t knock on the door,” Grace said.

“I don’t think the wood knocked on the door. I think Mr. Lafferty knocked on the door and then left.”

“Oh. Yeah. That does make more sense. What was I thinking, huh?”

“I’m pretty sure you weren’t. You know what this means, don’t you?”

Grace didn’t. But she knew by the tone of Rayleen’s voice that it wasn’t good. It seemed it must mean something very not good.

“No. What does it mean?”

“It means he did something nice for us. And so now we have to go tell him we appreciate it.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Sounds bad enough to me.”

“Want me to go alone?”

“No. I’ll come. It won’t kill me to thank him, too. Besides, I probably need to pay him back for it.”

“What if it’s more than you have?”

“Cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Right,” Grace said. “I still don’t know what that means.”

But Rayleen just locked the door behind them, and then took Grace by the hand, and they walked upstairs together.

Rayleen knocked on Mr. Lafferty’s door.

He answered with that same frown on his face. Only this time he saw Rayleen, and he kept the frown. He leaned on his door frame and just looked at her, and not in a very happy way at all.

“We came to say thank you,” Rayleen said.

“I liked the idea of her learning tap,” Mr. Lafferty said. “She needs the exercise. That’s a good hobby, too. Wholesome, you know? Not like the crap kids are into these days. It sounded like a step in the right direction for her.”

“It was a very nice thing to do,” Rayleen said. “Especially so fast.”

“Yeah, it was really fast!” Grace said.

Mr. Lafferty just stared at Rayleen a moment, still not looking very happy.

Then he said, “I can be a nice guy.”

Rayleen took a big deep breath before she answered, like she needed to count to ten first. Then she said, “Obviously so. Obviously you can. So, what do I owe you for that?”

“If I’d wanted my money back for it, I’d have taped the receipt to it. And I wouldn’t have just left it down there and come back up here. I would have come to your door and told you what you owed me.”

He sounded a little bit unhappy, like there was some kind of problem, but Grace couldn’t see why, because everything seemed to be working out really well.

“Thank you very much,” Rayleen said, like she was all done talking.

And Grace said, “Yeah, thank you very much.”

Then Rayleen took hold of her hand and walked her down the hall. But before they could get to the stairs, Mr. Lafferty called after them.

He said, “Did Grace tell you what I said about what you guys are doing? Did she tell you I said you’re only enabling her mom to stay addicted?”