I let out a long sigh. “I could do a lot more to help if you’d just tell me what’s going on.”
Maggie took a long draw from her mug of tea, but otherwise didn’t respond.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go. But if you hear anything about Shay, you tell me, all right?”
“Of course.” She said it so innocently. Like she’d never keep anything from me.
I had once helped Shay study for a vocabulary test while he was in high school. One of the words on his list was inscrutable. Impossible to understand or interpret. Half a dozen years later and I could still remember the precise definition because she was sitting right across the table from me.
C
HAPTER
S
IX
THE SUN BEATING down on my shoulders made me wonder if maybe I should rethink my life. It was nearly 100 degrees in the shade, but up on this tar roof it was probably closer to 130. Sweat poured down my face, burning my eyes and making it difficult to see. Uncle John and Pete had already moved on to the next house, which meant I was on my own to finish this one.
The house was owned by an ancient-looking lady who lived alone. We’d come by her house, told her we had extra supplies left over from a previous job (our usual line), and that we were willing to fix her roof at a discount. She bought what we were selling with interest, which explained why we were getting paid $3,000 for a job only worth about a thousand bucks. Or, well, it would’ve been worth a thousand bucks if we were actually doing a proper patch job. Instead, we’d just slapped on a few coats of black paint to make the roof look prettier and called it a day.
I’d offered to stay behind and finish up because I felt sorry for the lady. Here she was all alone, and now we were taking advantage of her. I still wasn’t doing $3,000 worth of work—I didn’t have the right supplies—but I figured if I used enough caulk it would stay watertight for a while yet.
I shouldn’t have bothered. It wasn’t my fault old country people were so easy to take advantage of. The buffers were the ones who were terrible—not looking out for their own. Letting their parents rot alone, living off their government social security. Travelers would never do such a thing. If one of our men got to be so old he couldn’t work, he’d move into a trailer on one of his children’s property. We did what family was supposed to do. If country people wouldn’t take care of their own, letting them live off the dole and getting ripped off by strangers, who was the bad guy here: us or them?
Or at least that’s what I was supposed to tell myself. But I still felt sorry for old buffers. It was bad enough they had no family to help them out, but then we’d come around and take the little money they had left.
I let out a long sigh. Sometimes I couldn’t help but think I was born into the wrong family. I used up what caulk I had left and climbed back down the ladder. I didn’t have much to pack up, but I folded the ladder and threw it into the back of my truck along with my tool belt and the empty caulk gun.
I headed for the truck’s cab. There was no reason to stay. The lady had already paid my uncle in full, and it wasn’t wise to linger any longer than necessary, but something drove me to tell the lady I was going to be on my way.
I rang the doorbell and only waited a moment before she opened the door. Her hair was stark white but perfectly quaffed in that short, curly pouf that so many old buffer ladies liked to wear.
“Oh, you look positively roasting!” the woman said dramatically in her frail-sounding voice. “Come in here this instant. I’ll pour you a glass of lemonade. I was just making some for myself.”
“Oh no, ma’am. I just wanted to tell you your roof’s done. It shouldn’t be giving you any more problems.”
“No, no, no. You must come in. It’ll only be a moment.”
I stepped into the woman’s house. It was small. The furniture looked old, but everything was meticulously cared for. It reminded me of someplace else, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on where.
“Now you sit right down here,” the woman said, motioning toward her kitchen table.
“Thanks, ma’am.”
She sat across from me and set out a glass of lemonade for each of us.
“I’m so happy you stopped by,” she said. “I never would’ve known how bad my roof was.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am.” I drank quickly.
“It’s been hard since my husband died. We bought this house after he retired.”
I tried to smile, but I think it came out more as a grimace.
“He died last year, you see. He used to be the one to take care of matters like the roof.” She looked off sadly. “It’s been lonely around here without him. I’ve taken to talking to myself. I’m afraid the neighbors think I’ve gone a bit batty, but my mind’s still all here.” She tapped herself on the temple.
“See your kids much?” I asked, wondering if this woman was really all on her own.
“Oh, we never could have kids. It’s just me. I keep thinking maybe I should get a cat, but they shed too much and I’m allergic.”
I couldn’t hear about this woman’s problems anymore; it was too much. That’s why we were supposed to get in and get out. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I need to be on my way.”
“Oh, fine, yes,” she said. I stood up and made my way halfway to the door before she pushed her chair back.
“Tell your uncle thank you for me,” she called out. “What a nice man. And hardworking. Especially considering his poor leg.”
My hand was on the doorknob. I was almost free.
“Oh wait, one more thing,” she said.
Against my better judgment I turned around. “Yes?”
She hobbled toward me, her hand on one of her hips. She bent down slowly to pick up her purse where it was sitting next to the door and pulled out a handful of cash. “Here, this is for you. It’s a hot day today. You deserve it.”
“Oh, no, ma’am, I couldn’t.”
“You can and you will,” she said shoving the money at me.
“I just did my job, and—”
“Nonsense. I won’t hear any more of it. Take the money.”
I grabbed the bills from her hand and shoved them in my pocket. I gave her as much of a smile as I could work up with all that guilt gnawing away at my insides. “Thanks.”
“Any time. You come back and visit, you hear? Make me less lonely.”
I jogged back to my truck, and by the time I made it to the door, I was out of breath even though I’d only run a few dozen yards.
I felt a buzzing in my pocket and nearly jumped out of my skin. What the hell was that? I swatted at my side and felt the hard rectangle of plastic. Oh, the phone.
Oh, shit. The phone.
This was it. Shay was in trouble. And I was all the way in Oklahoma.
I grabbed the phone out of my pocket, but in my scramble, I dropped it on the ground. The battery flew off, and I had to put it all back together again. By the time the phone was back in one piece and had restarted, my hands were shaking with dread.
I looked at the screen, and it reported that I had one message. In the “from” line I expected to see “Shay Reilly” or even an unknown number, but instead it said “Bruiser.”
What the hell?
I opened the message and it said simply,
Come over tonight.
What was this?
Bruiser?
And then it clicked. Tracy. She must’ve programmed in her number while I was fixing her sink.
I fumbled around with the phone for a little while, trying to figure out how to type out words. Finally I managed,
Can’t…working.
I hopped in my truck but didn’t put the key in the ignition. A moment later I received yet another message.
After work?
Can’t…in Oklahoma…on a job.
Too bad,
she replied. And then,
had a recipe I wanted to try on you.
Sorry.
Another time then?
Sure
, I replied.
I told myself I was just trying to get her off my back, but really, I did want to see her again. There was something about Tracy that was painfully intriguing. Emphasis on the word painfully, especially if Pop found out and sent his boys to teach me a lesson about shitting where we all ate.
I put my key in the ignition, and the truck started in one go. A record. I put the truck in gear, but then stopped. Leaving the vehicle running, I pulled the emergency break and hopped out. I ran back up to the old lady’s door. There was a mail slot in the middle, and before I could change my mind, I took the money she’d given me, plus a little extra, and pushed it through the door.
C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
“OOOH, FANCY PANTS has a phone,” my cousin Pete said. He was driving my truck on our way to our last job, his dad driving the other truck.
“Fuck you,” I said good-naturedly.
I looked up from the phone buzzing in my hand. Tracy and I had been texting a lot over the last three weeks. If you would’ve asked me what about, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Nothing, really, but it was nice.
“Seriously, though,” Pete said. “You know the government can track you with those things.”
I cast him a withering look but didn’t respond.
“Who’s that calling you all the time?”
“Texting,” I mumbled.
“Texting then.”
“I told you. It’s Shay up in Pennsylvania.”
“I don’t believe it. You both love to jabber, but this is a little much even for you ladies.”
“Shut it, Pete.” I did not “jabber.” I knew he was just yanking my chain, but I’d always prided myself on being the strong, silent type, so his teasing hit a nerve.
I opened up the display and read the new message.
When you coming back?
Driving home tomorrow…miss me?
Sure do,
her message said, and my heart thumped just a little harder. The phone buzzed again a second later.
My sink’s clogged again.
I smirked at the phone like she was looking back at me.
That all I’m good for?
That and a few other things I could think up.
I glanced at Pete from the corner of my eye and shifted just a little so the back of the phone was turned toward him before I answered.
Oh, and what might those be?
Come over to my place when you get back and you’ll find out.
Until that point our texts had flown back and forth, but now I paused. It was fun flirting with Tracy when I was hundreds of miles away, but seeing her in person again? That sounded suspiciously like a relationship. Between me and a country girl. Who lived less than thirty minutes from the Village. I couldn’t do it.
Could I?
I mean, really, who’d stop me?
Everyone was out on the road. Well, other than the old people who didn’t work anymore, the women with school-aged children, and Pop Sheedy. Still, no one was paying attention to what I did. Maggie was too preoccupied with that business with Emma Sheedy and worrying about Shay.
Shay
. Here I’d gone and warned him to stay away from country girls. I told him that getting involved with some college girl up north was a bad idea, even if it was only for a con. So then what did I promptly go and do? Start up my own fling down here. Which was worse! At least when Shay’s con was over, he could leave his girl behind.
How was this supposed to end? I couldn’t exactly bring Tracy home to meet the family. “Here’s my brother Shay,” I’d say, “and my mother Maggie. Yeah, we all call her by her first name, but that’s not even the weirdest thing about me. Let me introduce you to the rest of my clan.”
“Clan? So you really are a dirty gypsy!” she’d yell, quickly followed by a view of her backside running away from me and my screwed-up family.
And that’s not even to mention how everyone in the clan would react. “Dragging” isn’t a strong enough word. If it were known that I was even friendly with a country girl, let alone dating one, I’d be kicked out of the clan. In fact, I’d be lucky if they’d let Maggie and Shay stay. No one would talk to me. I’d be nothing. A nonentity.
And yet…
And yet?
I was such a fucking sap. I knew all of this. And I knew that there was no way for this situation to end well, and yet I still sort of wanted to see where it would go.
I scowled. I was still lying to myself. There was no “sort of” about it. I did want to see where this would go because there was something different about this girl. Something
honest.
She was more real than any of the girls I’d ever encountered in the Village or anywhere else.
She was the first person I ever felt like I could really talk to. The first person that didn’t make me feel like life was one big competition where I was the biggest loser.
I mean, of course I had Shay. But without my da around, I’d always felt more like the man of the house than Shay’s brother. And, yeah, I had Maggie. My mam was one of a kind, but she wasn’t exactly the sort of person you could have a heart-to-heart with unless all you were looking for were cryptic answers and a nice cup of tea.
Tracy. She was someone I could talk to. Someone I could imagine being with. Even when we weren’t saying anything important, we were. Or at least that’s the way it felt. And I wasn’t ready to give that up. Not yet, anyway. Whatever came later—her finding out about the clan or the clan finding out about her—I’d deal with that only when I had to.
C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
“WHEN YOU SAID I was good for things other than unclogging drains, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” I said to Tracy as we pulled into the parking lot of our destination. She’d insisted on driving and wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but as I looked around, I had a pretty good idea.