Page 107 of Not a Word

When it got to be fifteen minutes to seven, she was dealing with a woman whose credit card was declined. All the checkouts were busy and there were four people with loaded baskets behind this woman. When the first card failed, she tried a second, and when that one was declined as well, she opened up her wallet for cash and found she only had eight dollars. There was more than fifty bucks’ worth of groceries on the register.

“I don’t know why this is happening,” she said. “Can we try this one again?”

Alicia indulged her, but she could see how this was going to go. This woman would ask if she could just take the groceries now, run to an ATM, and come right back with the cash.

Fat chance, Sally.

Although, for the briefest of moments, Alicia considered treating her. She was coming into a small fortune. Why not share the wealth?

And then, just as quickly, she came to her senses.

The woman abandoned her groceries at the bagging end and stormed out. Corky was called to gather up the items and reshelve them. The people still in line were rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. Alicia finally snuck a peek across the street, but there was nobody lifting the dumpster lid, no one in the alley at all.

Fingers crossed, Catherine kept her promise.

When it was seven, Alicia took one last look around the store, thinking she would never have to come here again. She cashed out, hit the break room—Holden texted her again and she ignored it—and took off her grocery store smock, grabbed her purse, and was out of there.

Don’t be too obvious, she thought. Don’t come tearing out of the store like it’s on fire, run across the street so quickly she’d have to dodge traffic. No, she came out the front door slowly, hung a right, walked down to the corner, waited for the light to change and crossed the street, then backtracked, pausing to look in the window of a dress shop along the way, then when she reached the alley slipped in when she was confident no one was looking her way.

She went straight to the dumpster, lifted the lid.

Phew. The stench. Maybe she should have picked a different spot. But there was the paper Longchamp bag sitting atop a pile of green garbage bags, within easy reach, thank god. The last thing Alicia wanted was to jump in there.

She slipped her fingers into the handle of the bag, lifted it out, let the lid slam shut. It had a nice heft to it, this bag. She’d wondered what that much money would feel like. She looked inside, saw a box, about the size printer paper would come in, mummified in duct tape. She’d hoped to get a glimpse of the cash right away, but she’d have to wait until she got home. Annoying, but then again, Catherine was smart to have the cash wrapped up tight.

Alicia tucked the box under her arm, tossed the bag it had come in, and headed for home. Yet another text dinged on her phone, probably Holden. Whatever his current crisis was, it could wait.

Her apartment was in a low-rise not far from her work. A fifteen-minute walk most days, except in winter when the sidewalks were icy or hadn’t been cleared of snow. She used her key to get into the lobby, went to the elevator, and took it up to the fourth floor.

Once in her small apartment, Alicia put the box on the kitchen table, brought out a pair of scissors and a sharp knife from a drawer, and started hacking her way into it, cutting through tape that ran along the top flaps.

Her heart hammering away with expectation, she opened the box.

It was filled to the top with old copies of National Geographic, Time, The New Yorker, and car magazines. She started lifting them out of the box, tossing them onto the table, hoping that maybe beneath them she might find some actual cash.

“That cunt!” she said out loud. “That fucking cunt!”

Enraged, she grabbed one magazine and flung it across the room, where it hit the wall and landed on the couch.

She got out her phone, the one she used exclusively to make her calls to Catherine, but just as she was about to enter the number, there was a loud knock at her door.

Thirty-Seven

Reece

I went into the house, called out, “Diana!”

“Up here!” she called back, sounding like she was up in our bedroom, or Gage’s. I met her at the bottom of the stairs as she was coming down.

Before I could tell her about my mother’s call, that Holden had somehow learned about his parentage, most likely from McCabe, Diana said, “Gage isn’t here.”

“I was out front all this time. I didn’t see him.”

“Then I guess he went out the back way.”

“Did you call him?”

She held her phone up so I could see she had tried to text him. “He’s not answering.”