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By the time the clerk had finished counting, and I made it to the front of the line, it was 9:03. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t sell you this.”
I had my ID ready, just in case, and I presented it.
“No,” she informed me. “If the register reads past nine p.m., I can’t make the sale.”
A man behind me groaned. He set his six-pack in the middle of the floor and walked out.
I thanked the woman before returning the bottle to the shelf. I picked up the man’s beer and handed it to the cashier. “There’s a bar down the street,” she offered with a smile.
And that’s where I ended up.
Two vodka cherry sours is all it took.
Flashing lights behind me. I hadn’t swerved. I hadn’t sped. I hadn’t even felt drunk.
It was the taillight I had been after Ethan to fix.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SADIE
The way Ann watches me come up the lane makes me feel uneasy. The Ativan I popped helps to take the edge off, but it doesn’t make the anxiety go away altogether. Does she know where I’ve been? Does she know about my misdeeds? Does she know what I’m keeping from her? Ann has a way of looking straight through you, and even I know that’s easier to do at a distance. She asked me to come down for coffee. And, because there’s something she wants to show me.
“Do you think it’s too much?” she asks when I reach the porch.
I have no idea what she’s talking about. I don’t want to seem stupid which forces me to wait for her to explain. Finally, she motions toward the yard.
In the daylight, and in wondering if she thinks I am capable of prison time, if I am good enough to have coffee with, worthy of being her friend, of keeping a small animal alive, I hadn’t noticed the Christmas decorations.
I realize I shouldn’t care so much about what anyone else thinks. But I do. I really, really do. My plan can’t work if I don’t.
Idle hands. Ethan never should have suggested I leave my job. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had time to read so many internet articles or watch 24/7 newsfeeds about the destruction of everything we know, our planet included. How can you escape from that? Because if America goes the way of China and implements an official social credit score—I don’t want to be screwed.
Trust me. You can’t. Destruction is inevitable. You hear about addictions all the time. I thought addictions were about things that made you feel good. Or at the very least, made you feel nothing at all. No one warns you that you can become addicted to knowing about terrible things. But you can. Knowledge is power.
“We always did it up big in our old neighborhood,” Ann says bringing me back to the present moment. She’s very good at that. “But here, well, here… I noticed things are a bit more subdued.”
“Subdued?” Clearly, she hasn’t seen some of the women on our street with a few too many cocktails in them. Her last party hadn’t really been that kind. Just wait. There is still time.
“Oh, you know…” she laments. But I’m not sure I do. “Quieter.”
“You mean boring?”
Her eyes light up. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“It looks fine,” I assure her. “Subtle.”
“Subtle.” The word rests on her lips and she smiles. “That’s a nice way to put it.”
“So—coffee or tea…or gin?” she asks as she turns and opens the door. She holds it open for me.
“Coffee,” I say thinking she is joking about the gin. It is hardly two in the afternoon. But when she fills her tumbler, I ca
n see she isn’t.
“How do you take it?”
“I’m sorry?”
