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And that wasmore or less howthings went the first week or so with onlyworkon my little house to break up the monotony. One day, I came home and went to town, scrubbing the bathroom until it was suitable to shower in. Another day, I came home and pulled up the matted, stained carpets in the living room and bedrooms. Little by little, it was looking cleaner, at the very least, and I was starting to see the potential underneath the grime.
But the whispers hadn’t stopped.
It was the start of my second week when I walked into McKenna’s Delicatessen to grab some lunch. The only cop I ever saw wandering around town watched me with a blend of curiosity and suspicion as I walked up to the counter and asked the woman at the register—the same woman who’d shielded her kids from me that first day—for a chicken salad sandwich.
“Of course,” she replied and set to work, risking a cautious glance in my direction. “So, um … you work at The Fisch Market, don’t you?”
She knew I did. She’d seen me there several times, just as I’d seen her. But she was making friendly small talk, or so it seemed, while that cop observed the exchange from the row of refrigerators behind me.
“Yeah,” I replied, nodding. “I just started last week.”
“How are you liking it so far?” She laid out the bread and pulled out the container of chicken salad.
I shrugged and stuffed my hands into my pockets. “It’s okay. Honestly, I’m just grateful to have the job. I owe Howard and Connie a lot for setting me up like this.”
The cop took a step closer. “They’re good people,” he said, and I turned to look at him.
“They are,” I agreed.
“Everyone here is.” He met my eye with what I perceived as a warning of sorts. As if to say,Thisis my flock, and if you fuck with them, I will fuck with you.
But he wasn’t going to intimidate me that easily. His job was to protect—I got that. But my job was to move on and make something of myself, and I had no intention of fucking with anyone.
“I’m sure they are.”
The woman behind the counter turned with my sandwich wrapped up and smiled as she rang me up. I paid, accepted my change, wished her a good day, and turned to leave without another look at that cop.
He followed.
“Hey, wait,” he called, and I stopped to glance over my shoulder. “I think we’regettin’ off on the wrong foot,” he said, then offered his hand to shake. “Officer Patrick Kinney.”
I eyed his palm for a moment before accepting the gesture. “Soldier Mason.”
“Yahaveto forgive us, Soldier,” Officer Kinney said with an apologetic glint in his blue eyes. “We live in a quiet small town, and just the thought of someonecomin’ in andupsettin’ the balance shakes us up.”
I allowed the tension in my spine to loosen a bit as I nodded understandingly. “I don’t blame anyone for being suspicious.”
“Give us time,” he said, and I agreed with a smile and a nod.
It was the first act of kindness I was shown.
The second came later that day in the form of a prepubescent boy.
While I sat on a chair at the back of the store, eating my sandwich and trying to figure out how to send Harry a picture in a text message on that damn phone, I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see a boy of maybe ten or eleven watching me. I was sure he thought he was hiding effectively behind the rack of bananas, but the kid hid worse than I would behind a flagpole.
But I pretended not to see him.
I wondered where his mom or dad was. If they knew he was missing or if they knew their kid was doing a bang-up job of snooping on the new guy in town. And I bit back a laugh when he leaned too far to the left and tripped over his own feet.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, realizing he had blown his cover, only to turn right into the banana rack and knock several bunches off their hooks. “Ah, man …”
I stood up, dusting the sandwich crumbs off the bib of my apron. “Don’t worry about it. I got it.”
“What? N-no, it’s—” He looked over his shoulder, and his eyes raked over my body before widening with awe. “Wow. You’re, like,reallytall.”
“Huh.” I made a show of pressing my hands to my head and looking down at the floor. “Look at that. I guess I am.”
“How tallareyou?”
