Hemingway, meet Sam Spade.
Angie skimmed the headline on the front page. She chanced another look at her daughter. The cup caught her attention. JOSEPHINE was written in black marker. Angie knew there was a lot in a name. Her mother’s pimp had called her Angela. Even now, if anyone said the name, bile would shoot into her mouth.
Angie took a deep breath. She let her eyes travel up.
Jo was staring out the window. Angie followed her sight line to the white stucco wall of the strip mall. The girl was waiting for something. Thinking about something. Upset about something. Her eyes did not move from the wall. She was sitting on her hands. Steam rose from her untouched coffee. Her phone was face up on the bar in front of her. She was tense. Angie felt like she could reach across Hemingway and actually touch the woman’s anxiety.
But that wasn’t what she was here for.
Angie opened the newspaper. She pretended to be interested in world events. And then she actually got interested in world events, because nothing else was happening. The woman next to her got up and left. The line at the counter thinned, then disappeared. The parking lot began to empty. Finally Hemingway moved to an oversized chair a few tables away.
Angie turned the page in her newspaper. FINANCE.
She glanced at Jo.
Her daughter had not moved. She was still sitting on her hands. Still staring at the blank wall. Still almost shaking with anxiety.
They were the only two people left at the bar. Angie got up and moved a few stools away because that’s what a normal person would do. She spread out the newspaper. She wasn’t Meryl Streep. She couldn’t pretend to be interested in finance. She turned to the LIFE section. She reached for her juice, but so much time had passed that the bottle was warm.
Angie’s eyes started to blur from reading the tiny words. She looked out the window and blinked. She watched a car pull into the street. She listened to Hemingway banging away at his laptop.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jo jump. The move was almost imperceptible. A half-second later, Angie heard Jo’s phone ring. Not a ring exactly, more like a noise you’d hear from a 1950s sci-fi movie.
FaceTime.
Jo’s hands were shaking when she accepted the video call. She held the phone low in front of her face. Angie couldn’t see the image of the caller, nor could she hear that person’s voice. Jo had slipped in earbuds. She held the tiny mic up to her mouth and said, ‘I’m here.’
Angie pulled her own phone out of her purse. She tapped some buttons. She pretended to toss the phone back into her purse, but the move was practiced. The phone landed at an angle, camera facing toward Jo. Angie couldn’t look at what was happening live, but she could watch the video later.
‘Yes,’ Jo said. ‘Do you see?’
Angie’s vision tunneled on the newsprint. She felt a pain in her ear. She was straining to hear Jo’s voice, but it was little more than a whisper.
Jo said, ‘Yes. I understand.’
Angie flipped the paper over. She ran her finger down a line of text that she could not read. Jo’s voice was still low, but she sounded panicked, afraid.
‘I understand.’
Who could make Jo sound scared? Marcus Rippy came to mind. He liked being in charge. Jo was his type. So was Angie, but even at twenty-seven, Angie could handle guys like that. She didn’t think little Josephine from Thomaston could handle anything.
‘I will,’ Jo said. ‘Thank you.’
There was a change in the air. Stress draining away. The call had ended. Jo put down the phone. Her elbows went to the bar. Her head dropped into her hands. Relief radiated off her thin body.
Her voice. Angie had been too wrapped up in the whispery hush to analyze the sound.
Jo started to cry. Angie had never been good with emotion. Her options were always to either wait it out or go away. She racked her brain to think how a normal person would behave in a Starbucks with a woman crying a few chairs away. Angie could reasonably ask the girl if she was all right. That seemed like an appropriate response. Jo’s shoulders were shaking. She was clearly upset. Angie could just say the words: Are you okay? It was a simple question. People asked variations of it all the time to complete strangers. In elevators. In bathrooms. In line for coffee.
How are you doing?
Angie opened her mouth, but it was too late.
Jo stood up. She unhooked her purse from the back of her chair. Or at least she tried to. The strap got caught. The chair toppled. The sound was like an explosion in the small space. Hemingway rushed over to help her.
‘I’ve got it,’ Jo said.
‘I can—’
‘I know how to pick up a fucking chair!’
She snatched the chair from his hands. She slammed it back in place. The sound echoed like a gunshot. Heads swiveled to see what the problem was. The barista started to walk around the counter.
‘I’m sorry,’ Hemingway apologized. ‘I was just trying to help.’
‘Help.’ Jo snorted. ‘Mind your own fucking business. That’s how you can help.’
Jo yanked open the glass door. She stalked across the parking lot. She threw her purse into her car. Her tires burned against asphalt as she streaked out of the parking lot.
‘Jeesh,’ Hemingway said. ‘What was that?’
Angie smiled.
That was her daughter.
WEDNESDAY, 10:27 AM
Angie drove down Chattahoochee Avenue at an old lady’s pace. Her transmission was slipping. She didn’t have time to top off the fluid. She didn’t have time to change her coffee-stained jeans. She was late meeting Dale and his electronics guy. There were a lot of things Angie didn’t mind being late for, but everything had changed half an hour ago inside the Starbucks.
‘Dammit!’ Angie struggled to push the gear into fourth. There was a grinding sound that sent a rattle into the clutch.
Maybe she could talk Dale’s guy into topping off her transmission fluid. Or maybe she would torch the car and leave it burning in front of Sara Linton’s apartment building. She was the reason Angie had to buy transmission fluid by the case. Normally Angie would spend a few weeks with Will, let him fix the car, then head on her way, but that wasn’t an option since Red Riding Hood was sleeping in her bed.
His name is my favorite word, Sara had written to her sister.
‘Shit.’ Angie hissed out one of her favorite words between her teeth. She couldn’t dredge up her usual anger for Sara Linton. She was too worried about Jo.
She had to watch the Starbucks video again. Her phone battery was almost gone from playing it so much. Angie kept her palms on the steering wheel and balanced her phone between her fingers. She tapped the arrow for play. ‘Do you see?’ Jo whispered, holding up her iPhone, proving to the caller that she was inside the Starbucks. ‘I understand . . . I will . . . thank you . . .’
Before Angie made detective, she had worked as a beat cop. She took nights, because they paid more. Every shift was basically ten seconds of adrenaline sandwiched by eight hours of social work. The old-timers called them chicken bones, because you’d get a call to somebody’s shitty apartment and find two rednecks fighting over something stupid, like a chicken bone. Not that the call was ever a cakewalk. You never knew when two neighbors arguing about a barbecue grill could turn into a stand-off with a drunk pointing a loaded shotgun at your chest.