By the time I finished leaving Kevin's message, my phone indicated four voice mails and six e-mails. I tackled e-mail, replying to client inquiries and forwarding a personal request intended for Lexa. Voice mail increased my to-do list significantly.
Rapping on the driver's window startled me, but the shock was quickly replaced by giddiness. Jacob stood outside, waving at me. He signaled for me to roll down the window and I complied. A rush of cool wind filled my vehicle.
“We're going to have to start charging you for cyber access,” he teased. “A dollar a minute.”
Though his joke wasn't necessarily funny, I found myself tickled pink. “Open a tab for me.”
A quick glance at my growing list of tasks yielded a negative response. “Gotta run. Aunt Dottie's put some hefty items on my agenda.... By the way, do you know where Sandra lives?”
“Meyers or Jarrett?”
“Meyers.”
“Of course I know where my cousin lives. She's in the blue house on Lolita, next street over from Red's Barbecue. You remember where Red's is, right?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
He tapped the hood of my car and shifted the weight of his body. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Sure will.”
Jacob walked away, his image darkening as the tint on my windows glided upward.
I should have gone inside.
For what? So I could sit, look into his eyes, and make callow comments like “you're so cute” and “I had a crush on you” all the while feeling guilty on account of Kevin? Why was I even allowing myself to think such silly thoughts?
Driving away from church grounds relieved my internal tension. Maybe if I did a better job of organizing myself before going to the library, I could cut these Mount Pisgah visits to a bare minimum.
Now that I was away from Jacob, the day's plans came back into focus. Cassandra's grandmother's house looked much like the one I'd mistakenly visited earlier. At this point, many of the homes in Bayford were starting to resemble one another in my brain: covered porches, sizable front lawns, chain-link fences, drainage ditches lining the streets.
I reached through the torn screen netting and knocked on the faded wooden door. Cassandra's beaming face greeted me. “Hey, girl. Good to see you again. “ We hugged and the heavenly aroma of fried chicken emanated from her clothes. “Come on in. You want something to eat?”
My stomach spoke for me. “Love some.”
I followed her to the kitchen, noting the worn vinyl floor tiles and vintage seventies wallpaper. Nothing had changed since the last time I entered this house, either. Matter of fact, I think Cassandra was still using that same cast-iron skillet she'd used to cook bacon on Saturday mornings before we'd go to the community pool. By the jar of grease sitting at the back of the stove, Cassandra still ate bacon every morning.
Cassandra herself looked quite the same, too, plus maybe another twenty pounds. Not bad considering how much weight most of my college friends had put on in less than a decade.
“Girl, you ain't changed at all.” She laughed while piling our plates with chicken and mashed potatoes.
“What?”
“Always overanalyzing stuff,” she teased. “You walk into a room and take stock of everything and everybody.”
Her observation made me wonder if I, too, was stuck in some kind of time trap. “I'm sorry.”
“Don't apologize. That's just you.” She smiled, setting my plate down, joining me at the table. “And this is just me.”
She blessed the food and I, for one, dove into the meal head first. Lost all sense of calories and fat grams, and drank sweet tea like it wasn't loaded with sugar.
We caught up on the formals for a while. Neither of us was married. No kids. Since graduating from high school, Cassandra had earned a cosmetology license, but she hated dealing with peoples' unrealistic expectations. “I mean, they come in with a spoonful of hair and want to walk out looking like Beyoncé. I'm not a miracle worker.”
I'd forgotten how much Cassandra used to crack me up.
“Plus there's too much gossip in a beauty salon. You know me, I ain't tryin' to be in everybody's business.” She shook her head.
“Sandra, please. You were the queen of gossip in high school,” I reminded her.
Her mouth fell open. “Me?”
“Yes, you!”
“I am not a gossip . . . anymore,” she surrendered, and stuffed her mouth with potatoes.
“Exactly when did the gossip guru relinquish her title?” I examined her.
She laughed slightly, then appeared to give my question thought. “Since God changed me.”
Took me off guard. “Really?”
Cassandra squared eyes with mine and she swallowed her food. “Really.”
I don't think I'd ever heard anyone under the age of fifty say anything so profound about God. I mean, you get spammy texts about Godâ“if you love God, forward this” or “send this to five people and you'll be blessed tomorrow by 11:09
A.M.
” Modern-day equivalent to chain letters, if you asked me.
Cassandra's confession about God, however, rang with authenticity. Made me wonder if we had much in common anymore. I mean, I liked God and I figured He must like me, too, otherwise why would He have taken the time to create me? He was pretty good, from what I could tell, but He hadn't tried to change me. Maybe that's because I was a pretty good person already.
Yeah, that's it.
The wall clock reminded me I had miles to go before DeAndre returned home from school. “Well, I need to talk to you about something.”
“Shoot.”
Might as well put it all out there. “Aunt Dottie wanted me to ask you if you'd like to reopen and manage the store until she recovers.”
Cassandra almost choked on her drink. “She wants
me
to run the store? Shazooka!”
Her reaction mirrored mine at the news. I, in turn, mimicked Aunt Dottie. “Don't worry, Sandra, I'll help you with the vendors and the paperwork. And you know how Aunt Dottie isâshe'll recover in no time.”
Cassandra looked at me above the rim of her glasses. “How are you gonna help me run the store from three hundred miles away?”
“I'm not going back to Houston any time soon,” I quickly assured her. “I'm here for you.”
She sighed pensively and gave me a you-better-be-glad-I-like-you roll of the eyes.
I tried another angle. “Don't you want to . . . get back to work? We all need money, right?”
Couldn't argue that one. She nodded in resignation. “We've got to get in there and clean the store out first. Milk's spoiled, bread's hard by now. When do you wanna get started?”
The concept of cleaning the store hadn't entered my mind, but Cassandra was right. Reopening the store would be a huge undertaking. By the way things looked when I stopped by Dottie's the other day, no one had touched a thing since she suffered the stroke.
“We're gonna need Elgin,” she suggested
“Who's Elgin?”
“Part-timer. He cleans and does all the heavy lifting. He-man for real.” She flexed her arms.
Sounded like a good plan. “Call him.”
Within a few minutes, my team of three gathered to open the doors of Dottie's. Surprisingly, there was no pungent odor greeting us upon entry. The refrigerators were still plugged in, so nothing had a chance to attract flies. Some dust had settled on the cash register, but aside from that, no trumpet blast.
Upon entrance, the five aisles to the left stocked pantry itemsâcereal, chips, flour, sugar, bread. To the right, candy and household goods like scissors, paper towels, and toothpaste. Refrigerators cooled dairy products and packaged lunch meat along the back walls. Straight ahead, the counter, my favorite place, secured deli meats and cheeses Aunt Dottie cut to order. And, of course, my college diploma provided the perfect covering for the door leading to the back office.
“Glad to be back,” Cassandra declared.
Elgin, a salt-and-pepper-haired man in his midfifties who obviously spent too much time pumping iron, proved a handy addition. He started right away clearing out the lunch meat from the deli area. Cassandra started on the bread aisle, and I holed myself in the back office, contacting vendors to resume deliveries.
After Elgin declared the store ready for business, we gathered at the front counter to figure out a work schedule. Cassandra would open at nine Monday through Friday and work until five. I'd close out the day from five until seven. “I'll be here as long as I need to be here,” she said.
Elgin would come in at noon and stay until closing every day. We'd have to play this coming Saturday by ear because, between me and Cassandra, we'd be worked to death by then. We needed to hire someone, quickly. Both Cassandra and Elgin said they knew people who needed part-time work. I told them I'd run those people by Aunt Dottie.
Thank God we were closed Sundays.
I dropped Cassandra off at her house and headed back to the hospital to fill Aunt Dottie in on our progress. Halfway to the hospital, my phone bleeped, marking one of those freak-signal moments. I pulled over to the side of the road, set my blinkers, and made mental note of this hot spot on Opal Street between Dottie's and the hospital. Voice mail flashed: 1 Message.
I dialed quickly, before the cosmos rearranged. “Hello, this message is for Tori Henderson. This is Shayna Ash, the principal at Bayford Elementary School. Wanted to let you know that DeAndre has been suspended from school for the next two days for fighting. Please come pick him up as soon as you get this message, since he won't be allowed to ride the bus home this afternoon. Thank you.”
My first question: why is she calling me? Secondly, how did she get my number?
I disconnected the call, bristling with annoyance. Had the principal left her number, I would have gladly told her to call Ms. Joenetta or Ray-Ray. Or maybe even DeAndre's mother's family. Where were those people, anyway?
The e-mail icon grabbed my attention before I could process my questions. One from Preston marked urgent caught my eye. I tapped the phone's touch-screen accordingly, my heart thumping even more. The “thinking” emblem circled on the monitor. And it circled, and circled, and circled again.
Cannot retrieve messages at this time. Forced close.
“What?! Open! Open!” I tried to open the application again, but noticed the empty gray bars. “Crazy!”
So, what, a cloud drifts by and my signal disappears?
My attempted race to the church was thwarted by a school bus ahead of me, stopping at seemingly every possible corner, releasing streams of the slowest-walking kids I'd seen in a while. Obviously, none of DeAndre's friends.
Calm down, Tori.
Another stop, another deep breath.
Glancing down at my console, the time struck me. Three-thirty. By now, DeAndre must have been sitting in the office for fifteen minutes after school dismissed, assuming neither Joenetta nor Ray-Ray had gone to get him. I envisioned his little brown eyes following every passing car as he waited for a ride home. Was he hurt? Did he have a busted lip? What happened to the other kid?
Bayford's elementary, middle, and high schools were so close they all shared a common parking lot. I hopped out of my vehicle and reluctantly trudged toward the office of the smallest building. DeAndre sat just inside the main office, swinging his legs over the edge of a bench.
After an immediate flash of relief, his face settled into a frown. “Hi, Cousin Tori.”
“What happened, DeAndre?”
A tall, stout woman emerged from a side door, flipping long blond hair over her shoulder. “Miss Henderson?”
“Yes.”
“Hello. Thanks for coming.” She clipped her words. Obviously, we shared a mutual distaste for unruly children. She handed me a carbon copy of the document detailing DeAndre's infraction. He and another boy had gotten into an argument in the morning that escalated into a physical confrontation during recess. Pretty cut-and-dry scenario. She closed with, “We'll see DeAndre again Tuesday morning.”
“Certainly,” I agreed, folding the papers and placing them in my purse for future reference. “Thank you. By the way, Ms. Ash, I don't believe I listed myself as an emergency contact for DeAndre.”
“Oh.” She softened. “I got your number through Aunt Dottie's nurse. How is she, by the way?”
Should have known. “She's improving, thank you. Let's go, DeAndre.”
He sulked all the way back to my car and I wondered why he, suspended-boy, felt perfectly within his rights displaying attitude.
He buckled himself into the passenger's seat and looked straight ahead. Tell me that was not a smirk on his face?