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As we moved through the rows of greenery, I couldn’t help thinking about that look. It was as if she’d been asking for permission to show me around—which didn’t make any sense since he’d called her over to do just that. It gave me a sour taste in my mouth that only intensified when I realized that Ephraim had followed us at a distance and camped out one row over while Caity asked how big my garden beds were and showed me what she thought would look nice.
“You went to school with Ephraim?” his wife asked casually as we stood at the little register near the front door a few minutes later.
“With Ephraim and Esther,” I confirmed with a nod.
Her gaze sharpened. “You know Esther, too?”
I laughed lightly and shrugged, my stomach clenching for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint as she watched me closely. “About as well as I know Ephraim. I didn’t really hang out with either of them, but it’s not a big school.”
She smiled back at me as she nodded, but her eyes were wary.
“You guys all finished?” Ephraim asked, wiping off his hands as he walked toward us. As if he hadn’t been watching us the whole damn time like a psycho.
By the time I left, I had six bushes in pots on a drop cloth on my back seat and my skin was crawling. On the outside, they seemed like any other couple. No sense of tension or anything like that, but when you watched them a little something just felt wrong about it. Maybe it was because I’d grown up with women who had no problem saying what they wanted and doing what they wanted and generally taking no shit from anyone, not even their husbands. There wasn’t anything that I could say that definitively bothered me about Ephraim and his wife, it’s not like he’d beat her in front of me or something, but the way she’d looked to him like she was gauging his opinion of what she said and how she acted…felt gross.
I also hadn’t learned anything about Esther. I hadn’t even had the chance to ask about her in a way that wouldn’t have become suspicious pretty quickly. Even mentioning her name had them looking at me like a hawk. I figured that wasn’t a good thing.
Pulling out my phone, I called Titus.
“You go to the garden center?” he asked, the sound of a bunch of teenagers talking over each other in the background.
“It was just her older brother and sister-in-law,” I said, glancing back at the stupid plants in my back seat. “No sign of her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t work today,” Titus said, the background noise getting a little quieter. “You didn’t ask about her, right?”
“No. I mentioned that I’d gone to school with her and Ephraim and the wife picked right up on it and asked if I knew Esther.”
“Huh.”
“The way she asked was weird, man. Like the answer was important.”
“What did you say?”
“That I knew her as well as Ephraim because it was such a small school. It feltoff.”
“I told you they were fuckin’ strange. Didn’t I tell you—”
“Yeah, you told me.” I sighed. “Not sure how I’m gonna talk to her. It’s not like I could randomly run into her somewhere. I haven’t before now.”
“I think the women keep pretty close to home.”
“How the fuck do you know all this?” I asked in exasperation. “You’re the prince of not payin’ attention to what’s goin’ on around you.”
“I pay attention to some shit,” he countered. “Listen, bell just rang and I need to get back to class. I have an idea though. I’ll call you after school.”
He hung up before I could tell him not todoanything. The little shit.
I probably shouldn’t have pulled him into my bullshit, but he was the only one who actually knew who Esther was. If I’d tried to explain the situation to anyone else, they wouldn’t have been able to understand what I was dealing with. Hell, I didn’t fully understand what I was dealing with—but ironically, Titus seemed to have a good grasp on it.
After dropping the plants off in my front yard and putting the Mustang away, I got my Harley out of the garage and headed into work. Thankfully, everyone was pretty easy going about people taking days off or coming in late or early. As long as you weren’t being a dirtbag and still hit your forty hours, they didn’t really give a shit when you were there.
Almost everyone in the club worked at the garage at one point or another, but the old timers came in pretty sporadically, so it was a surprise to see the forecourt filled with bikes so early on a Tuesday.
“Where you been?” my older brother Micky called as I parked my bike.
I waited until I’d pulled my helmet off to answer him. “What are you, my mother?”
“Cute,” he muttered. “Shit’s goin’ down and you’re bein’ cute.”
