LITMIR.BIZ

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Joe. Don’t bury yourself in work. Talk to me. Talk to me like you used to. Share things. Share—

      But I didn’t say that aloud. No point in it. I’d been saying it for months, and every time he just shrugged it off.

      “What else is new with Cherie?”

      “Have you tried…talking to her? I mean, about college or tech school or—”

      “Right, Sara. She’s a high school dropout. What school’s going to want her?”

      I stepped back, startled by the ferocity of his tone. “I was just thinking—”

      “How about you leave Cherie to me, and you worry about Ma? Huh? That a fair trade?”

      Now it was me who looked away. I tried to get my emotions under control so that I wouldn’t say anything I’d regret.

      “I’m sorry, Joe. I didn’t mean to— I didn’t mean anything by it.”

      Something softened in his face, and he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just…I’ve just been worried out of my head about you, and you wouldn’t let me go with you this morning, and I didn’t sleep too good last night, what with Cherie and…you. And then you didn’t call. I was sure…”

      I reached up and touched his cheek. “I’m okay, Joe.”

      He cleared his throat, his not-so-subtle signal that I was straying toward the mushy subjects he’d rather avoid. Sure enough, he ignored my reply. Instead, he asked, “I wondered what you were doing about lunch. Did you go by the house and get something?”

      “No. What with Ma, I didn’t have time.”

      “She doesn’t give a damn about you.”

      The bald observation was laced with a considerable amount of bitterness.

      “It’s not like she’s up for Mother of the Year,” I said. “She’s just Ma. That’s all there is to it. Can’t expect anything more than she can give.”

      Joe pulled out a tape measure from his tool belt and fiddled with it, his features darkened by a frown. “How can you do it, Sara? How can you say, ‘Sure, Ma, I’ll go get groceries at the last minute, do without lunch,’ when she doesn’t care enough about you to think about what today’s doctor appointment means?”

      I worked my mouth around a variety of answers, all of them some variation of, The same reason you keep extending Cherie second and third and fourth chances. Certain Joe wouldn’t find that a satisfactory answer, I just shook my head. “It’s okay. Really. It doesn’t bother me.”

      Much.

      “It damn well ought to bother her. She could have lost you. We all could have lost you. Bet she never thought about that.”

      “Joe…” He’d been descending into these moods more and more lately. I tried hard to keep the Ma problem as separate as I could. Most times Joe dealt with her and her escapades with wry humor, but others, he was just angry. Sometimes he seemed angry that I wasn’t angry enough.

      That you don’t show how angry you really are.

      I ignored that inner whisper. “You haven’t lost me. You’re stuck with me for a long, long time, Joe. I promise. Really, truly. We’re going to be fine.”

      But as I walked toward the car a few minutes later, I could feel his eyes on me. I could feel his doubt, as heavy as a hand on my back.

      For all my cheerful optimistic reassurances to Joe, I wasn’t at all sure we’d be fine. I wouldn’t feel that way until Joe told me we’d be fine.

      And for that to happen, he’d have to start talking about whatever was going on behind that carefully controlled mask of his.

      MY CELL PHONE rang again as I zipped along the two-lane road to Campbell, which was replete with hand-painted signs that exhorted, Repent: The End Is Nigh.

      Sure feels that way to me, I thought, as I flipped the phone open and ground out a, “Ma, I’m—”

      “Whoa, girl. You sound like you’ve been on twenty miles of bad road.”

      Warmth flooded me. Maggie, my best friend, my partner-in-crime.

      “I have at that. The boss looking for me?”

      “Not yet. How did the doctor’s appointment go?”

      Leave it to Maggie to ask and Ma to completely forget the significance of today. “Fine,” I told her. “I’ll fill you in on everything when I get there, but first I’ve got to make a milk run by Ma’s. Can you cover for me at work?”

      “You’re in luck. Mr. Eeyore’s gone to a meeting over at the elementary school, and he’s having lunch over there.”

      I breathed a sigh of relief. Mr. Eeyore—Daryl Morris, the Bryce County school superintendent—could never be mistaken for a happy camper. Maggie worked as his assistant superintendent, so she caught the brunt of all his delegating and gloomy predictions. I, a truancy officer with a fancy title, mostly had to deal with him when we met at the coffee machine.

      “Maybe that means I can get a bite to eat after all.”

      “Not with Ma on your case,” Maggie told me in an all-knowing voice. “I’ll handle lunch. You handle Ma.”

      With that, she rang off, and I pressed the accelerator on the car a little bit harder.

      “HEY, SARA!”

      I turned from the open door of my Jetta in the direction of the call. I’d recognize that bellow anywhere.

      Maggie stepped away from her SUV, closing the distance between us, white paper bags in her hands. “You best be glad you got here when you did,” she said with a swirl of her wild African-print dress. “I’d be one mad black woman if I’d had to go in that doctor’s office after you. You know I don’t do ob-gyns. But I would have if I’d had to.”

      Maggie didn’t “do” doctors at all. Strong, brave, tell-it-like-it-was as Maggie might be, the only way she’d be caught with a doctor was if he were writing out her death certificate. I’d given up trying to convince her to go.

      I opened my arms for a soul-fortifying hug, which she gave without hesitation. Hiding my face in the cotton of her dress offered me a chance to squelch a few tears and regain my tough act. When I stepped back, I said, “Okay. So you see I survived. I told you I would.”

      She blew a raspberry. “Just for that, you don’t get your treat.”

      “Treat?”

      “I picked up salads at Ida’s Buffet. I thought we could eat by the track then get our walking in before we headed back. Grab your shoes.”

      Now Maggie really deserved the hug—lunch and conversation. What more could a girl want? As we headed to the track near the county board office, some of the tension uncoiled from my shoulders. Maggie made talking easy; she didn’t require endless explanations and footnotes.

      I’d known Maggie since the first day of kindergarten—when I pulled one of the dozens of pigtails she had caught up in pastel-colored plastic barrettes. She’d backhanded me, I’d stomped her foot, and the teacher had sent us to time-out together. Once the tears had stopped, we’d bonded against a common enemy, friends forever.

      Under the shade of a willow tree, the two of us munched on our lunch in silence for a few minutes before she asked, “What took so long at the doctor’s office, anyway?”

      “Oh, they just had every pregnant woman in Laurens County in there.”

      A look of concern flashed across Maggie’s face, but I forestalled it with, “And a Cherie look-alike. Down to the belly button ring. A few years and she’ll have the tattoo, too.”

      Maggie wrinkled her nose in disgust. “LaTisha wants a belly button

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