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“Hi, sugar,” she said and Zoe let herself get pulled into a monstrous hug. It looked good; I couldn’t lie. I was tired and worn-out, and getting folded into that giant hug seemed like a pretty good way to spend a few seconds.
“This is Carter,” Zoe said, turning to introduce me.
“I know who he is,” Mama said, and as she tucked her arms up under her shelf of breasts I prepared myself for more deadbeat daddy stuff.
“Mama,” Zoe whispered. “Carter’s not the father.”
“Oh, any fool could see that,” Mama said. “Not sure what’s going on there, but Mr. O’Neill, you got my vote if you gonna be running for mayor. We need to be cleaning up these communities, like you been trying to do.”
I smiled, pleased and relieved. Zoe looked stunned, as if shocked that anyone believed in my message.
“I appreciate that, Ma’am.”
“Call me Mama. Now, what you two having?”
“I’ll have what she’s having,” I said.
Zoe ordered catfish and greens, and she reached for her bag to pay, but I put down a twenty.
“Eat with me,” I said, the words popping out of my mouth, inspired by the strain around her eyes and the weary slouch to her shoulders.
She seemed unsure. As if saying yes might change our arrangement.
“It’s just dinner,” I said, feeling oddly slighted.
She shook her head. “It’s not, Carter,” she said, so forthright and honest it shook me. “Not for me. I like you. I need to go with my head on this one. And my head says dinner would be a mistake.”
“When have you ever gone with your head, Zoe?” I didn’t know much about her, but that she lived through her heart was obvious to the world.
“That’s the problem,” she said. “That’s always the problem.”
“Then how about coffee,” I said. “Thursday?”
“More reputation repair work?”
If that’s all I could get.
You’re pathetic, I told myself, but myself wasn’t listening.
“Yes,” I said. “We can meet at the coffee shop outside city hall.”
Mama slid big takeaway boxes onto the counter.
“Here y’all are,” she said. “Have at it.”
Zoe took her bag, swinging it up over her shoulder, and then took the food.
“Zoe,” I said. “Let me help.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Really.”
She wasn’t going to let me help. She wasn’t going to eat with me. She was shutting me right out.
Just business.
She’d told me—I shouldn’t be so hurt or surprised. But I was.
“Well—” her smile was sharp and false, a knife through my stomach “—I guess…I’ll see you on Thursday.”
“Sure,” I said.
And she was gone.
ZOE
Twenty minutes later, I climbed the stairs to my loft, feeling harried and fat and more pregnant than any one woman should. My head hurt as though I had an emotional hangover from seeing Carter. He’d looked faded, somehow, and I’d wanted to ask him what was wrong. I wanted to ask him about his day, tell him about mine. About the two-year-old in my toddler class who’d told the whole room about peeing in the potty.
But I’d done the right thing, saying no to dinner. I was proud of myself. If only proud gave me the same warm tingles that Carter did.
Distracted by my mixed emotions, I nearly collided with a man standing right in front of my door.
“Ohmygod,” I yelped, leaping back and bumping into the wall. My heart thundered so hard against my chest I saw stars. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m so sorry,” the man said, holding his hands out. He seemed contrite, but I’d been bombarded by people who weren’t what they seemed these days. “I really am, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The guy had kind of a puppy dog face, soft cheeks and heavy eyes. Brown hair that was a little shaggy.
The kind of guy that shocked neighbors said seemed so nice, so unassuming, after all the dead bodies were found in his apartment.
I slipped my hand into my bag for the Mace attached to my key ring. I was a woman alone in the world—I wasn’t a fool.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Not to get sprayed with Mace,” he said, nodding down to the hand in my bag. His smile was lopsided and sweet, and it almost made me forget that he’d somehow broken into my building and had been lying in wait for me.
He reached for his pocket and I whipped my Mace up and out of the bag. “I’m getting my ID,” he said. “That’s all.”
“My neighbors are really nosy,” I said in warning. “One peep out of me and all these doors will open.”
I didn’t say that all my neighbors were about eighty years old and he could overpower them with one hand.
“I’m a reporter. My name is Jim Blackwell.”
Now I recognized him. He was the reporter with the cell phone camera in that meeting. He was the reason I was in the papers.
“I know who you are,” I snapped. “And if you don’t want to get maced on principle, then you’ve got about five seconds to get the hell out of here.”
