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“I know you think that’s what you’re doing. But Devo, you committed a real crime today. I have no doubt Mr. Graves will press charges. How’s that going to help your cause?”
“My cause? Mine? Isn’t it your cause too?”
He stared at me through the cell door. I’d never seen him so angry.
“No, Devo. This is on you. Breaking someone’s storefront window because you’re mad about a product they’re selling is your cross to bear. Don’t you even try to put this on Ace’s House. We can’t be connected to that kind of activity. In fact, if you are charged with a crime and you end up in front of a judge, that’s what you had better say. Or you will lose your job.”
Kicking my shoe against the cell door, I nodded. He was right. I knew he was. And I didn’t want to bring negativity to Ace’s House or to Theo. He’d done so much good in the community already in the short time we’d been open, and I was grateful for my job. Truly, I had been since the day he hired me.
But I was also pissed off. The rest of Wisper seemed to accept Ace’s House. They could see the good we’d been doing, even if we were still “those homosexuals” to a lot of people, but not Red Graves. He made it his mission every day to offend me or Theo, the people who came to Ace’s House seeking help, and sometimes he even disrespected Abey right to her face. A freakin’ cop!
And still, she did nothing, even when he told her he didn’t have to do what she said when she’d ordered him to put out the burning rainbow flag he’d lit with a Zippo last week in the middle of downtown. It was just a small promotional window cling someone had stuck to his store’s front window. I didn’t even think it had anything to do with the gay community, but Red hadn’t cared. He was convinced I’d been the one to put it there, so he set it on fire.
And when she tried to talk to him, he told Abey he wasn’t taking orders from “someone like her.” He’d meant because she was a woman, or maybe he knew she was a gay woman.
But whatever the reason, it was rude and condescending and disrespectful. He wouldn’t move a muscle until Abey called Sheriff Michaels on her radio, and then when the big man stomped across the street to give Red the evil eye, he finally stepped on the burning plastic, then turned heel and slammed his doors closed behind him.
Was it wrong of me to chuck a brick through his window just because he was intolerant and sold bullshit anti-gay T-shirts?
Okay, fine, yeah, it was. But what should I have done? God, that man infuriated me! I’d never met someone who offended me so deeply just by breathing and by the disgusted look in his eyes every time I interacted with him.
What had I or anybody else ever done to him to make him so mean?
“I’ll ask Brady to stop by here on his way home. Hopefully, he can help you untangle this mess, but Devo, please don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Don’t make me have to fire you. I don’t know what I would do without you. Ace’s House can’t thrive without you. Please?”
Aw man, I couldn’t take it when he said things like that. “I’m sorry. I just get so mad.”
“I know. And I understand. I really do. But there are better ways to handle your anger. I think you know that already.”
“Yeah,” I admitted as Abey poked her head in the room of shame, the one usually reserved for drunk idiots who needed to sober up and, apparently, me. She handed Theo a bottle of water to hand to me, and she flashed me a pity smile. She’d warned me.
I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes, and she tossed a granola bar through the cell door, right at my head.
“Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with a grin, and she ducked back out of the room.
Theo flashed me a pitying look, too, as he passed the water bottle through the cell bars. “I have to go. Some of the workers from the resort in Jackson are coming today.”
“They are? Why?”
“They’re getting ready to strike, and they’re using Ace’s House as a place to meet beforehand. I told you about it last week. If you weren’t always trying to make trouble where there doesn’t have to be any, maybe you would’ve remembered.” I winced audibly as he looked at his phone. Shit. I’d completely forgotten. “They’ll be here any minute. And there’s a girl who’s been coming in with some of the summer kids, but I have a bad feeling about her. I want to keep an eye on her.”
“What do you mean? You think she’s in trouble? Dangerous?”
“Not dangerous, no, but I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”
“Yeah, but your ‘just a feeling’ was spot on with Murphy.”
Theo had called Abey’s partner, Deputy Sims, and thankfully, he’d figured out Murphy’s secret. They’d gotten to him just in time, before he’d died out on the streets, alone, starving, and freezing two winters ago, and now, Murph was officially Frank’s son. He and his wife had adopted Murph as soon as they could get the adoption through the court system.
“I’m keeping my eye on the situation, but I could really use the backup.” He raised his eyebrows at me.
“I know,” I said as dejectedly as I could and scuffed my shoe against the cell door again.
Dammit. I felt awful for putting him in this position. And I felt really bad that I’d forgotten about the strikers. Was he right that I caused problems where there didn’t need to be any?
No. I loved Theo. He was more than a boss. He was a treasured friend, had been since the day we met, but he was wrong.
