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She put her hands on the table, as if she was about to push out of the booth and leave. “Yes, I did. I still do. You know why? Because we were the same, Shannon and me. I’m the kind of person the world throws away, too. The only difference is that I managed to live longer. I managed to get sober and raise kids and get a prescription for Prozac. Shannon got to die, and I got to work in this restaurant until they tell me I’m too old to hostess anymore. Shannon lost her gamble, and I won mine. Look around you. This, for me, is what’s considered winning.” She slid to the edge of the seat, then paused. “I hope you find the bastard that killed her. She deserved a shot, like me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The long drive back to Coldlake Falls left us exhausted. Eddie was keyed up; he was used to constant physical activity in the army, and exercise was how he got out of his head. Almost as soon as we parked the car in Rose’s driveway, he said he was going for a run.
I nodded. Rose wasn’t home, and the house was empty. “I’m going to call the bowling alley,” I said. “They’re expecting me back. I’ll tell them it will be a few more days.”
Our honeymoon—the one we’d originally planned—was almost over, but there was no discussion of going home yet. Eddie nodded and said, “I should call Paul, too. I’ll do it later. He won’t mind.” Paul was his boss at the garage.
After Eddie left for his run, I took a seat in the phone nook in the corner of the kitchen. This was a chair with a padded seat next to a table with a telephone on it. Predictably for Rose, the phone was the ornate kind, the headset resting on two upstretched hooks. She probably imagined it was the kind of phone they had at Buckingham Palace. Still, even as I squeezed into the fussy space, I realized I was getting used to Rose and her aesthetic. It was almost calming. I let my gaze rise to a picture of Princess Diana on the wall as I picked up the phone and dialed. Since the number was long-distance, I made a mental note to pay Rose for the charges.
My boss at the bowling alley in Ann Arbor wasn’t happy to hear what I had to say. “I had you scheduled for tomorrow night,” he complained.
“Sorry,” I said. “We’ve been delayed. I won’t be back by then.”
“This is inconvenient. I was counting on you, April.”
“I know it’s—”
“You’re being irresponsible.”
I stared at Princess Diana, and suddenly I was gripped with an exhaustion so deep it was almost transcendent, an exhaustion I had never known I was capable of. How many arguments had I had in my life, with how many useless bosses, at how many dead-end jobs? I wasn’t being paid for my days off—it made no difference to his bottom line whether I showed up or not. I was disposable, and yet I was treated like a disappointment for acting that way. Just like every other job I’d ever worked.
The thought bubbled through my mind, unbidden: I don’t want to do this anymore. I want more.
Surviving to tomorrow wasn’t good enough. Not anymore.
“I’ll be back when I’m back,” I said, unable to keep the sharpness from my voice.
“I might have to let you go.”
I should care. I had to pay rent, bills. The bank account had been emptied. I needed a job. I should care.
Rhonda Jean had bled out in the back seat of my car, scared. Her bloody hand had gripped mine as the life seeped out of her. And the Lost Girl was still on the road, murdered and unidentified, begging for help.
“I’ll be back when I’m back,” I said again, and hung up.
I let the silence seep into my brain as I steeled myself. If I was let go from my job, we would need money while I looked for another one. I picked up the phone again and dialed a number I knew by heart, one I had been dialing for years.
It took a few minutes to connect. I had to talk to an operator, then another, and then wait as beeps sounded in my ear. But finally, at long last, the phone on the other end was picked up and I heard the familiar voice.
“Hello?”
“Mom, it’s me,” I said.
There was a beat of silence, enough to tell me everything I needed to know about the money. “Hi, baby.” My mother’s voice was rough, a smoker’s voice. She had been a smoker for as long as I’d known her. I supposed she still smoked in prison, too.
Even though I was angry at her, maybe as angry as I’d ever been, the first words out of my mouth were the usual ones. “Are you all right?”
“As good as I can be.” This was her usual answer. “How sweet of my girl to ask about me. I tell the others here that my daughter calls me regular. I don’t know if they believe me, but it’s true.”
My throat was dry, and I licked my lips. I had to get this call finished before Eddie came back from his run. “Mom, I’m calling for a reason.”
Her voice went cold. “Don’t start.”
“I’m starting.” My voice was as icy as hers; she was the one I’d learned it from. “I went to the bank. You cleaned the money out of the account.”
The money was ours, Mom’s and mine. Seven thousand dollars, sitting in a bank account that had both of our names on it. It had been nearly twenty thousand dollars once, but I’d withdrawn half of it over time to pay for Mom’s first set of appeals. It was a mistake I wasn’t going to make again.
