“Well, you shouldn’t have fucking had to. You should have come to me. Let me take care of it.”
“You were in prison,” she cut back.
“I’ve got ways.”
“I don’t want your shady money, James. I don’t want to pay for Mercy’s diapers with the proceeds from you selling stolen guns. Ever since I knew she was coming, I’ve done everything the right way. I’ve worked and I’ve lived cheap, and when I’ve needed help, people have helped me because they care.”
“Grossier,” he said, then clarified, “Casey.”
“Everyone in this house. And my other boss at the bar. The lady who used to rent a room to me—she let me out of my lease early and even let me have my deposit back. I’ve had help, but because people wanted to help, not because I scammed them into it. I’m not who I used to be.”
He nodded slowly, hesitantly. “I can see that. I can see enough to believe that—some of it, anyway. You look healthy,” he allowed. “And this is a real nice place. But it’s still my kid, Abilene. You two need somewhere permanent to live. Somewhere stable. It’s my job to provide that. Where the money comes from shouldn’t matter.”
“Of course it does. James,” she huffed, exasperated, “I’m not doing shit the wrong way anymore. Not ever again. I’d rather live in one crummy little room that I pay for with my tips than let you buy me a whole house with your filthy money.”
“My filthy money got your ass clean.”
“And I owe you for that. I might even owe you my life. But things are different now, and I don’t ever want to have to tell my daughter that her dad’s going back to prison for ten years—or worse. You’ve been busted twice. They catch you again, or if some weapon you sold winds up killing a cop or something, and they trace it back to you . . . All the money in the world doesn’t mean crap if you get locked up for good. And I’m not being evil here. And I’m not telling you that you can’t be a part of Mercy’s life. But if you are, you better believe you’re going straight.”
His eyebrows rose. “You got any idea how much I can make in a year, doing what I do? And you got any clue how much I’d make if I went and found some job fit for an ex-con with a ninth-grade education?”
“I don’t care how much you give us, only that it’s clean.”
He shook his head, heaved a deep breath. “You were so much easier to like when you were a mess—you know that?” Then his expression softened, telling her it was a joke.
She didn’t smile back. “Easier in a lot of ways, I’m sure. But I’m serious. I’d take fifty bucks a month that you made as a fry cook over five thousand that came from guns. And you can find something—you’re strong. And you must have learned some kind of skill in prison.”
“The math doesn’t work—”
“We’ll make it work. We have to. I can’t go back to how I used to be. Not anymore. My daughter’s not growing up with a criminal for a father or a train wreck for a mama. You go to Vince, see if he can get you a job at the quarry or something. Get a trucking license. Anything, so long as it’s honest.”
He rubbed his thighs again, looking pale. “I’ll think it over, okay?” From a man who didn’t back down, ever, it felt as solid as a promise.
“Good.”
“Now we need to talk about Grossier, though. You and him.”
“Casey? What about him?”
“You two. What are you?”
“He’s my boss. And my friend.”
“Tell me straight—you fucking him?”
She bit her tongue to quell a reflexive lie. She nodded. “Yeah. What about it?”
“I just want to know who he is to you. Who’s coming in and out of my daughter’s life.”
Who she thinks her daddy is, Abilene read between the lines. “He’s a good man.” Or he was now, she trusted. What he might have been before . . .
“I know he wants you safe,” James said. “But I also know he’s been inside, and I don’t know what for.”
“Neither do I. And I don’t want to.” All she knew was that it had been during his time in Vegas, so probably something to do with gambling.
“He’s coming around our daughter, so I goddamn do.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Yeah, I am. Because everybody knows exactly what it is I’ve been up to. And that I’ve done my time. But what do you really know about this guy? Really?”
“I know he treats me good. And that he cares about the baby.”
James flinched at that. Had to sting, knowing a stranger had been filling those shoes in his absence. Sleeping with his ex, caring for his child. Whatever came next, and for however long the present situation was reality, those two men would have tension. Some real ugly, heavy tension.
“You’ll just have to get good with him,” Abilene said. “Because he seems determined to be there for me.” As her lover, just for now, but as her boss and friend long after they quit sharing a bed, she hoped. Though would Casey still be so devoted, if James told him the truth about her?
“It’s not about my feelings,” James said evenly. “It’s about what’s best for the kid.”
He’d cooled himself off, and she did the same. She’d owed him answers and handed them over. But in all fairness she owed him a little more.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For keeping you in the dark. And for how I was when we split.”
“Not much to be done about it now.”
“Except to apologize. So I’m sorry. You know, I stole from you, when we broke up.”
“Three hundred dollars,” he confirmed.
It was technically three hundred and thirty that she’d taken out of his wallet, and he knew that, no doubt. She’d heard him on the phone with his customers, and he quoted people their debts right down to the penny, with interest. That he wasn’t hung up on the thirty bucks reassured her. It hinted that she was still a person to him, not a transaction.
“I’m sorry I took it,” she said.
“Don’t be, for fuck’s sake. That’s nothing. Just a final fuck-you, and I was happy to let you have the last word, if the payoff was me stitching my life back together in peace after you ripped it up.”
“I’m sorry, all the same.”
“You needed it more than me. Long as it went to groceries or rent and not dope, what the fuck do I care?”
“I bought a car with it,” she said lamely. The same heap she drove now. Two hundred fifty she’d paid, and used the rest for gas and a few meals. Not much of an investment, but it had been her first taste of freedom in months and months. It had carried her as far as Fortuity before the gas ran out. Dead broke and hungry, she’d asked the waitress at the diner if she could maybe get some food and wash dishes in exchange. She’d been offered a job instead, and here she’d stayed.
“So what’s next?” she asked him.
“What’s next is that I meet my daughter. And after that we figure out where you two’ll stay, and how to pay for it.”
“I can worry about that. I’ll be going back to work soon.”
“You’d never have needed to stop if you’d been straight with me.”
And here she stood, at the edge of what she feared most. Here she stood, ready to hand this man a knife and beg him not to use it on her. “James . . .”
“What?”
“I have a favor to ask you. A big one. One that matters way more than money to me.”
“So ask it,” he said, never one for a preamble.
“Please don’t tell anyone about how things were, when we met.”
He stared at her. “So you do get how fucked-up it was, then? You get exactly why I was so fucking eager to find you, make sure everything was okay over here?”
“I do, okay? Just promise me. Please.”
“You don’t want him to know how you were. He thinks you’re some fucking innocent little girl who got mixed up with a big bad man, doesn’t he?”