Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

I started dinner, which was going to be later than usual, like seven or eight o'clock. I'd decided to clean out the register and buy groceries, not just because it was Selfish Day, but because the way my week was going, I wasn't sure I was going to live until breakfast tomorrow, although the threat of Junior seemed significantly less. Junior's mother was still out there, and it seemed Betty Baumgarten had some history with her. Rocky Start had always been odd, a lot of close-mouthed retirees skulking about, but now it was beyond odd, zebras popping up everywhere.

I mean, Betty Baumgarten was a badass. Mindboggling.

So I figured "one day at a time" is a good motto. And since this was Selfish Day, I was sticking with it.

We had the money from the Susie Cooper cups, which was something—Art Deco china is not cheap and Ozzie had scored a box of it the week before—so I'd gone out and bought the stuff for the meal I'd been thinking about—steak, twice-baked potatoes, huge Caesar salad (Poppy has an unreasonable dislike of anchovies, which are essential to Caesar dressing, but as long as she didn't actually see them, she'd be fine)—and come back and stashed everything in the fridge, pleased that there was no one with a weapon in my kitchen. It might be my last day here, but Selfish Day was cheering me up. It didn't hurt that Junior had been wheeled out in a body bag. Alive, but you couldn't have everything.

I'm not a fancy cook. I have about twelve things I can make for dinner and they're all simple, like lasagna, but I'd worked on those recipes until they were really good. Ozzie never asked me to keep it cheap with cooking, so I didn't while he was paying for the groceries, but I never went overboard. I knew he didn't make anything from the shop, so I figured we were living on his savings. Ozzie had kept the books, which meant there weren't any, it was all in his head, and everything was done with cash. I understood that, not having any credit cards myself. But I saw sirloin and fresh mozzarella and organic produce fading from my life as soon as that damn envelope was opened tomorrow, so it was a good idea to roll in all of that today.

Also, cooking had nothing to do with the CIA.

So I scrubbed the potatoes and put them into the oven to bake, then mixed up the marinade—tamari, lemon juice, olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, salt, and pepper—and poured it over the four steaks I'd bought—two for tonight and then one for sandwiches for lunch tomorrow and another for stir fry tomorrow night—and put them in the fridge to soak for a couple of hours.

When Poppy got home, she told me she was having a meeting in my kitchen the next day after school with five other students, which brought some normalcy back to my life. I did notice her look over to the corner where Max's backpack had been.

"It's our final meeting for something secret," she told me as she leaned on the kitchen table, crunching a carrot she'd been dipping in the Caesar dressing I'd made. "So we'll need some privacy while we figure things out. Distribute the skills."

"Skills?" I said.

"Well, Darius is a great writer," she told me, smiling at the thought of her boyfriend. "And Mei is great at organizing. And Marley is a genius with motors and metal, and Reggie can carve anything into anything else. And Owen is a terrific manager. So we'll figure it out."

I was a little surprised at Reggie and Marley, Pike's two foster sons, sort of. No one quite knew the story there. They'd just appeared one day, two grungy little runaway boys, couldn't have been more than ten, and a week later, Lian had gotten their backstory which she did not share but which was obviously pretty bad, and arranged for Pike to foster them. The past ten years had been good for them: They'd grown up healthy and hardworking and non-criminal, aside from the weed, and really, weed doesn't count, but it did seem odd that they'd be working on a project with AP kids. "Isn't Reggie angry all the time?"

"He's better since he came out. It made him angry pretending to be somebody else. That would make anybody furious. He's dating Owen now. He's doing lots better."

"And he and Marley are usually stoned."

Poppy shook her head. "Mei made Marley quit before she'd go out with him. And he's crazy about her, so I think he's doing better. Not completely, but he's never high when he comes to school or town now. What they do out in the woods, that's their business. That's a start."

"I still don't get Mei and Marley," I said, wondering if Lian knew her Harvard-bound daughter's boyfriend was a pothead.

"You are so close-minded." Poppy was glaring again.

"Well . . ."

"Do you know how they got together? Lian's car stalled—it's too old, really—and Marley drove by and stopped. Lifted the hood and fixed whatever it was. And when Lian offered to pay him, he shook his head and said, ‘Neighbors,' and smiled at Mei, and then followed them into town to make sure they made it back to the office."

"And then he hit on Mei?"

"No, then Mei hit on him. She said he was so good with the engine and then so sweet to her mom, and then he followed them to make sure they were safe. She said, ‘That's boyfriend material.' So she hit on him. He was stunned, but he went for it."

Coral was right , I thought. Men were easy . I leaned back against the bookshelf behind the counter, thinking, Mei's right too. It was that competence porn thing. Like Max .

I mean, I was looking askance at Mei for dating a stoner, and I'd been lusting after a homeless guy who probably had a rich history of intoxicants and God knew what else. Although he wasn't a drinker now. There's a step up for me.

Poppy wasn't done. "I don't get this whole ‘college people are better than tradesmen' thing. The ability to fix a car is a lot better than the ability to deconstruct a sonnet. Or make a business plan, anybody can do that." She looked around the shop, probably thinking about a business plan that was never going to happen. "I mean, if you're going to attach to somebody, it's really hot if he's good at something."

I thought about what Coral had said about men like Max and shook my head. "So what's Darius good at? Besides writing."

"Oh my God," Poppy said. "Art. I'll have to make him show you his sketchbook. I watched him draw the other day, and I got hot just watching that pencil move across the page, he was so sure , you know. Just good ."

"Hot?" I looked at her, wondering if she was going to finally come clean about sleeping with Darius, and she said, "Don't ask if you don't want to know."

"Never do it without protection," I said, and she said, " Mom, I know ," and I said, "Your mother and your grandmother were both single mothers. Do not be like us."

"I'm not stupid," she said, which I could have construed as an insult, but since it was basically true that I'd been dumb as a rock to leave town with Malachi Grace, aka Jeremy Snodgrass, I let that one slide.

"Listen, I want you to stick close to Mei for a while," I told her. "Tell the guys to stay close, too. Come straight home and go to Coral's until Lian's off work and then walk Mei home."

Poppy's eyes had gotten huge. "Why?"

"Her mom thinks her dad's going to try to get in touch and she doesn't want him to," I told her. "He's not a good guy."

Poppy nodded. "Okay. We can do that."

She looked thoughtful and I wondered if she was thinking of her own absent father, a man who was gone before she was born. I didn't want her meeting him, either. So I changed the subject.

"We're eating big tonight," I told her. "Steak, salad, and twice-baked potatoes. Living large, baby."

"Even without Max here?" Poppy said.

"I've decided that today is Selfish Day. I'm doing whatever I want to. You can, too."

"I pretty much always do," Poppy said, still looking thoughtful. She was going to have questions later, once she'd worked it through. "Does that mean you're going to make something besides food today? Go back to making art?"

She sounded like she really cared about that, and I thought about my paregoric bottle with poppies. Not art. Pathetic. "Don't really have the time," I said. Cheerfully. "I'm not really an artist, Pops. I have more important things to do."

She rolled her eyes at me. "So you opened the shop today, despite it being Selfish Day?"

"I wanted money for a Selfish Dinner. My selfish is practical. Which reminds me, be very nice to Mrs. Baumgarten. Junior came back and pulled a gun on me, and she took him out with a taser. Then Melissa Merriweather came by in her hearse and took him away in a body bag."

"He died ?" Poppy was aghast.

"No. He was still twitching. It was just a taser. Although Melissa did inject him with something, but Betty said it was just to keep him knocked out till she could get him back to the mortuary. Or to Pike."

Poppy nodded, accepting a tasing and the removal of a problem in a body bag as just part of the day. "How long can we stay here before somebody throws us out?"

"Barry's opening that envelope tomorrow at one. If there's a will, we'll know who gets what then."

"And if there's not?"

"Norman gets it all, probably."

Poppy looked as horrified as I felt at that thought. "Life is not fair," she said. "I'm glad Mrs. Baumgarten tased that jerk. And we will definitely stick close to Mei. I'll tell the guys." Then she went upstairs to get her homework done before our Selfish Dinner.

Two hours later, Poppy and I were cutting shallots and red peppers for the salad—I know shallots and red peppers don't belong in a Caesar salad, but they were good, and it was Selfish Day—when somebody knocked on the back door.

Poppy turned around and her face lit up as she said, " Max! " and ran to open the door for him and Maggs.

I stopped chopping for a minute as my heart lurched into overdrive.

Maggs limped in, and Poppy said, "I told you so, there's blood on that bandage," and took Maggs over to the bay window to fix her up again.

I looked at Max. "Welcome . . . back."

I'd almost said "home," which was ridiculous.

He said, "Thank you," and put his ruck down. I thought if he was staying, he'd probably have taken it upstairs, so he'd just come back to get Maggs taken care of, but it was something. At least he came here when he needed help, didn't go next town over to some strange vet who wouldn't feed him steak and twice-baked potatoes.

But he was leaving again, so I just smiled and nodded—I've done a lot of smiling and nodding in my life, so it was pretty much my default look—and said, "Just in time for dinner," and then the oven dinged and I went to start scooping out the potatoes while Max sat down beside Poppy to see how bad Maggs' paw was.

William on the upper shelf looked down on them and went back to sleep. There was a good sign: William didn't hate him.

I stole a glance at Max, expressionless in the light from the setting sun. He looked stern and solid, like a bulwark against whatever was waiting to wash over us.

And hot. Now that I knew him, really hot.

Selfish Day had just gotten a lot better.