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On a cold April day, thanks to an awful card my awful Aunt ML had sent me, I was driving down Route 52 along the Ohio River toward my home town for the first time in fifteen years. I had a six-foot plush teddy bear riding shotgun (color: Guilt Red) while I told myself not to be ridiculous, everything would be fine, and look how beautiful the Ohio River is, and ML is nuts anyway. (The card ML had sent had one sentence on it: ‘Your mother is sick and in terrible trouble and needs you, but you don’t care because you’re a cruel, thoughtless daughter and a disgrace to the family.’ On the front, it had said, ‘Thinking of you . . .’)
Then I saw the Welcome to Burney, Ohio, sign looming up in front of me, and my childhood memories loomed, too, and my stomach turned over, and I flat-out panicked and floored the Camry past the turn-off to my mother’s house (and Aunt ML’s house three doors down), running from my past like the coward I was. The old car was hurtling along like a champ when I heard the siren. I looked in the rear-view mirror, saw a cop on my tail, said, “Oh, hell, no,” and pulled over onto the muddy edge of the two-lane highway.
I heard the door on the cop car behind me slam, and realized my palms were clammy which was ridiculous: I was not eighteen anymore. I was perfectly fine. I prayed that whoever was about to bust me didn’t know me. I’d been gone for fifteen years. It was possible. Not probable. But—
Somebody knocked on my window.
At first all I could see was a nice broad expanse of uniformed chest over a trim waist. Then I shut off the stereo—Terri Clark singing ‘Bigger Windows,’ so appropriate—rolled down the window letting in the cool April air, looked up, thought, Thank you, God. The cop wasn’t anybody I knew, which meant I wouldn’t get any 'Well, here’s trouble back in town’ crap. He had brown hair that looked like he’d cut it himself, non-twinkling brown eyes, and a nose that had been broken at least once, a real Burney guy.
I smiled up at him, cheerful and innocent as all hell.
He didn’t smile back, but he didn’t look particularly upset, either. And when he said, “Ma’am, do you realize you were going seventy-five in a fifty-mile-an-hour zone?” he sounded bored.
“Yes, officer,” I said, holding onto that smile. “I wasn’t thinking. I apologize and I certainly won’t do it again.”
He held out his hand. “License and registration, please.”
I got my license and insurance card out of my billfold and handed them to him, and said, “I’ll be just a second with that registration.” I shoved the bear back again and opened the glove box, and a bunch of papers cascaded out onto the floor. So, I stuck my head between the bear’s legs and into the space under the dashboard and sifted through a couple of dozen old repair bills, lapsed insurance cards, and expired registrations as fast as I could before I found the current one. When I straightened up again, he had bent down to look through the window.
“Nice bear,” he said, still with no expression at all.
“Thank you.” I handed him the registration.
He looked at it and then at the license. “Your name is Elizabeth M. Danger?”
“Yes, sir.” Please don’t ask what the “M” is for.
“Any relation to MaryBeth Danger?”
Oh, hell. “She’s my mother.” Please don’t tell her I’m here.
He nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
He walked around my old car, probably looking for code violations, and then back to his cruiser, and I rolled up the window and watched him in my
rear-view mirror to see if he was going to call my license in. He had a nice ass, but that was peripheral to the fact that of course he was going to call it in.
I tried some box breathing to chill the anxiety attack I did not want to have in front of the cop. In for four counts, hold for four counts, out for four counts, hold for four counts, in for . . .
The worst thing about traffic stops is the waiting. I’m sitting there like an idiot, box breathing while people drive past, and I really can’t do much because the cop’s going to come back, so I’m stuck with my thoughts. Like Fucking Burney, and I can’t believe I panicked like that, must be Post Traumatic Burney Syndrome, and I wonder if it looked like I was blowing that bear, and Fucking Burney, and That cop is cute in a Neanderthal kind of way, and Anemone hasn’t called me in twenty-four hours, I wonder if she’s trapped under someone heavy, and Fucking Burney. Well, you get my drift. I can’t do anything worthwhile because at any minute—
He knocked on the window again and I rolled it down.
“Since you’re a local, I called the station. Steve Crider says hi.” He passed back my registration and license.
“Steve’s a cop now?” I said, surprised. The police department was not where I would have guessed Steve Crider would end up.
“He also said not to give you a ticket and to say hi to your mom for him.”
“Good old Steve,” I said, with real enthusiasm. “Tell him I said thank you. Except I can’t say hi to my mother.”
He raised his eyebrows, so I went on: “I was stopping by home for a short visit because it was on my way to Chicago, and then I decided I didn’t want to, and that’s why I gunned the car, and once I’m done here, I’m going to keep on trucking, so I won’t be telling my mother anything for a while, and I definitely won’t be speeding in Burney again.” The guilt rose up again as I said that, but Aunt ML was insane, Mom was probably fine, so no reason to stop . . .
He nodded. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to say, ‘I sure will say hi’?”
“That would have been a lie.”
His eyebrows went up again on that one, but then he was a cop, so he probably figured everybody lied. Then he said, “Is your mom going to worry when you don’t show up?”
“She didn’t know I was coming.” I glanced at the giant bear beside me.
“It was going to be a surprise.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Then I can go?”
“If you want your right rear wheel to fall off. Did you have your tires rotated recently?”
I blinked up at him. “Last week. When I bought the car, Johnny Porter told me to do that every six months.”
“Johnny Porter. You bought it a few years ago, then?”
“Fifteen.”
“Right. Wait a moment, please.”
He went back to the cop car and opened the trunk. A minute later he was back holding an X shaped black wrench. “You’re missing three lug nuts on your right rear tire. Didn’t you feel the vibration? I noticed the tire was wobbling and that’s why I pulled you over.”
“What?” The entire car rattled and shook all the time. It was an eighteen-year-old car. That was like a hundred in people years. I’d rattle and shake, too.
He didn’t wait. I watched him walk around the car to the right rear and drop down. I was tempted to get out and watch, but he hadn’t said I could, and I didn’t know the proper protocol for lug nuts and cops, so I stayed put.
The car shook slightly a couple of times and then he was back. “I put new ones on.”
“You carry lug nuts with you?”
He seemed perplexed by the question. “Of course. I’d stop and get it lifted and those nuts tightened down first chance you get, but they should hold until Chicago.” He looked over the car.
“The tire will stay on.” He didn’t say anything about the rest of it.
“Thank you. Very much. That was above and beyond the call.”
“You’re good to go.”
“Uh,” I began, and he waited. “Could you ask Steve not to tell my mother . . .” I stopped, realizing how lame I sounded. I’m thirty-three and I’m asking the cops not to tell my mom I got busted. “Never mind.”
“Too late anyway. The grapevine here makes sound look slow.”
The way he said it and the accent, which sounded like New York City, made me think
he was still getting used to it, so I said, “You’re not from here, are you?”
“No.” He frowned at me, and I remembered I wasn’t the one who was supposed to ask the questions.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I’m used to interviewing people. Forget I asked that. Thank you very much for not giving me a ticket. And for the lug nuts. You’re a good person. I hope you enjoy living in Burney.”
“I do,” he said, actually sounding like he meant it, and stepped away from the car.
I turned the ignition and the car sputtered, as usual, and then the engine kicked in. I stepped on the gas pedal, and my tires spun. Hell. I’d forgotten I was in mud. I looked in the rear view and saw that the highway was still deserted except for the nice cop walking back to the cruiser behind me, so, apologizing to the Camry, I floored it. The car spurted out of the mud and onto the highway, fishtailing a little, and then it coughed in mid-surge and died.
I steered it back onto the shoulder using the last of its momentum, feeling guilty and stupid and cowardly. I knew that was no way to treat an eighteen-year-old car, but it was Burney for god’s sake. I tried to restart it. No go. “Come on, come on,” I said and tried again. No go. No, no, no, I thought, panic rising, please, not in Burney, and cranked the ignition again but there was nothing there.
I put my head on the steering wheel and tried to stay calm while my stomach churned. I was not trapped in Burney. This was not happening. A minute later, the cop knocked on the window.
I rolled it down. “Well, at least the tire didn’t fall off.”
“How bad is it?”
“I think it’s dead.”
“Try cranking it,” he suggested.
I did. He cocked his head, listening, then waved his hand for me to stop. “Yep. It’s dead. I can call the Porters.”
The Porters. Their mom Kitty had baby-sat me. I’d baby-sat their little sister Patsy. Their big brother Cash had felt me up in the front seat of the truck they’d probably send to tow my car. And they all knew my mother.
“Or not,” the cop said.
It would take hours for some out-of-town tow truck to get to Burney, and by that time, my mother would have heard and driven out to the highway to find me. “That would be . . . fine. Thank you.”
“How about this,” he said. “I give you a ride to the garage, you talk to the Porters in person and ask them to keep it quiet, and they’ll get you back on the road.”
I squinted up at him. He mostly looked monolithic, and his ears kind of stuck out, and those brown eyes were hooded which made him sort of inscrutable, and he definitely had been cutting his own hair, but I was warming to him. This was a man who understood the importance of avoiding family. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”
He opened the door for me, and I got out into the cold and looked up into sharp brown eyes and realized there was something going on there. He’d give good interview, I thought, and then I realized he was staring at my chest.
I looked down at my T-shirt that said Attempted Murder with the silhouette of two crows on a branch under it. “I’m not advocating murder,” I told him. “It’s a play on words. A bunch of crows is called a murder, like a bunch of seagulls is called a flock, but there are only two crows on the branch so they’re just trying for a murder.” When he didn’t say anything, I said, “I’m not going to kill anybody, I swear.”
“Good to know,” he said. “Better get a coat.”
I reached in for my hoodie and my laptop bag and saw the bear. Hell. I could just leave it in the car. If somebody stole the damn thing, I wouldn’t have to mail it to my mother. But it had cost two hundred dollars.
“Wait a minute.” I handed the cop the laptop bag and pulled the hoodie on. Then I went around to the passenger side of the car, opened the door, and tugged on the bear. It didn’t budge. I yanked again and then again, and it popped out, and I stumbled back and lost my balance and let go of the bear as I flailed my way down the embankment and fell on my butt in the mud.
I checked my hoodie. No mud. It’s a Wonderfalls hoodie that says I Surrender to Destiny and it’s a collector’s item so that was important. Then I looked up at the road and saw the cop, backlit by the late winter sun, my bag still under one arm, holding up the bear.
That bear was six feet
tall standing up, the top of it even with his head, so that was an impressive save.
“It’s fine,” he said, holding the bear even higher. “I got it before it hit the ground.”
“My hero,” I said.
“Should I cuff it?” he asked.
He was definitely not from Burney.
“We’re good,” I said. “Give me a minute here, please.”
He took the bear and my bag back to the cruiser while I climbed to my feet, examined the damage to my favorite five-button jeans—there was a laundromat in my future—and began Plan B. The Porters had a bathroom at the garage. I could wash out the dirt in their sink, leave town, and hit a laundromat when I got to Indiana. And maybe get the lug nuts tightened. I was pretty sure my mother wouldn’t follow me to Indiana. She didn’t like driving in the dark.
I was never opening a card from Aunt ML again.
I wiped the worst of the mud off on my jeans and began the crawl back up the embankment, and when I looked up, the cop was there again, holding out his hand.
I looked at my hand and said, “Mud,” and showed him.
“No problem,” he said, his hand still extended, so I put my dirty paw in his nice clean cop hand and let him pull me up onto the highway.
Once I got there, I looked up at him and held on for a moment. He had those eyes, and he’d hauled me out of a ditch, and he’d saved the damn bear. Plus, the lug nuts. I could spare a moment.
“I’m Liz,” I said.
“I’m Vince,” he said.
“Vince, I’m going to get mud in your car.”
“Not my car,” he said. “You can sit in the back with the bear. There’s been worse back there.”
“Good to know,” I said and went to get into the cruiser.
Vince
Depending on who was telling the story, I had expected Liz Danger to be either Harley Quinn or Jane Austen. But this Liz Danger? She didn’t fit either of those. She was a blonde, but it wasn’t hot blonde and for all her Burney rep as a troublemaker, she just seemed . . . tired. And tense but putting a good face on it. She’d made me want to smile—do not flirt with women during traffic stops, Cooper—and spend some more time with her. Even standing on the side of the road talking about lug nuts with her had felt easy. And then there was the fact that when I called her license in, Steve Crider said, “Lizzie Magnolia is home again?” So that ‘M’ on Liz Danger’s license stood for ‘Magnolia.’ Like she was some ante-bellum heiress in a big gown sipping mint juleps on the porch.
Shouldn’t work. But it kind of did. Maybe if the heiress was a real live wire with a great smile and a beer in her hand . . .
“Thank you for this,” she said from the back seat when I got into the cruiser. I looked in the rear view and saw her side by side with the giant red bear, smiling at me, and for a minute I reconsidered the no flirting idea.
Five minutes later, I dropped Elizabeth Magnolia off at Porter’s Garage where we found out that Will Porter was already on the way to get her car and Patsy Porter was on the road home from Columbus, so Liz’s cousin, Molly Blue, was coming to get her. Molly pulled in while the mechanic was still telling Liz all of this, so we stuffed that big bear into the back of her SUV and I went on my way toward my own problems.
I drove toward the biggest of the hills that loomed over Burney. At the base of the hill was the burnt out remains of what had once been the fourth largest cardboard factory in the United States, the basis of the Blue family fortune. A double-lane road wound past the factory and up the hill’s knees, twisting and turning next to a steep ravine. A place might only be two miles ‘up the hill’ as the locals put it, but that was a ten-minute drive if you were careful.
The hole in the guard rail on the hairpin turn bespoke someone who hadn’t been careful. I went past the turn and pulled off onto the shoulder to get the cruiser off the road and parked. I got out and walked to the edge as a car passed me, going up the hill. A snazzy red Lexus, so the mayor, Patrick O’Toole, probably on his way to the Blue Country Club. Not one of my favorite people, and I definitely wasn’t one of his since I’d arrested him for spousal abuse my first week on the job. George, my boss, had voided the arrest because O’Toole’s wife had refused to press charges even though everybody in JB’s bar had seen him hit her. O’Toole was more the chief’s headache than mine—O’Toole’s wife was George’s ex-wife—so I tried to stay out of his way. George had enough problems.
I turned to look down into the ravine. A splintered tree fifty feet below was the only sign of where Navy Blue’s car had ended up. The tree, once a tough oak clinging to side of the ravine was now leafless and forlorn and apparently dead, which was a shame. The Porters had had to call in help from the guy who had the big 18-wheeler truck rig to pull the car out. That was after I’d rappelled down to recover the body. Theirs had been more technically difficult, but mine had been harder in other ways.
Now one side of the torn guardrail stuck out over the void, twisted so that the flat side faced up. I sat on it and scooted out a little over the void, boots dangling, feeling the metal bend slightly. I’d grown to like the spot in the past few weeks because it felt like taking my feet off the ground disconnected me from Burney and
the world. It’s not that there’s anything bad about Burney. It’s like any other small town: politics and power plays over stupid small things at the top and mostly genuinely nice people everywhere else. Just sometimes I need a break from the world, especially lately.
I heard another vehicle coming up the hill and could tell by the slight engine knock it was the chief’s big Suburban, outfitted with all the lights and bells and whistles as befitting a small town cop who wore four stars on his collar, sort of like Eisenhower, if he’d been in charge of a mess hall and not Operation Overlord.
I didn’t look over my shoulder as the tires hit gravel, the engine turned off, a car door slammed, and boots crunched toward my location.
“What the hell are you doing up here again?” George asked.
I didn’t ask how he found me. The laptop bolted to the dash in the cruiser had GPS and the mayor had just gone by. “Thinking, Chief.”
He sighed, exasperated with me. “You don’t get paid to think.”
I gestured to the ravine. “Something’s wrong about this.”
“You gotta stop coming up here, Vince. You don’t know this town yet. You’re upsetting people.”
He acted like I fell off the truck and landed in Burney yesterday instead of six months ago. “Maybe because I’m not from Burney is why I’m picking something up.”
“The mayor would like you to stop picking things up,” he said but without much enthusiasm as there was no love lost between the chief and the mayor and not just because of the aforementioned ex-wife.
“I’m off shift, Chief,” I pointed out. “Seven minutes ago.”
“You pulled Liz Danger over for speeding and you didn’t write her up. Why not?”
Because Steve Crider told me not to? Because I had my own personal code about pulling people over and it didn’t mesh with the mayor’s need for a quota? Because she’d looked like she was blowing the big red bear when she’d looked for her registration which had almost made me laugh out loud? “I gave her a warning. A welcome back to Burney gift.” I looked back at the chief. “Is she welcome back to her childhood home?”
“Kind of weird she shows up after fifteen years the weekend her old boyfriend is getting married, don’t you think?”
“I’m not supposed to think.” I hadn’t known Cash Porter was her ex-boyfriend.
Because who dated who in this town fifteen years ago wasn’t a priority in my life.
George tried to stop from cracking a smile and failed.
I added, “She said she was home for her mother’s birthday.”
“Hmm.” George didn’t seem convinced. “Get off that thing. It makes me nervous.”
I’m the one on it, I thought. Why does it make you nervous?
“Navy was drunk and it was an accident. Let it go, Vince. This is what, the fourth time I’ve seen you sitting there?”
I pointed down toward the Ohio River, the setting sun behind hazy clouds. The Ohio is a wide and powerful river, with a very bloody history in Colonial times that I’d read about, and I enjoyed looking at it. “A good vantage point, Chief. I can see the town.” Okay, it wasn’t much of a town for someone from New York City, but it was my home now for six months and it was growing on me.
“Navy’s death is signed off on,” Chief reminded me. The more he tried to convince himself, the more I was sure something was off.
But I nodded. My friend Raina had told me that once something’s signed off on, it just means the powers-that-be are done with it. It doesn’t mean it’s right.
“It bothers people when you’re here,” Chief said. “Bothers the mayor in particular. He’s a good friend of the Blues. Doesn’t want any scandal.”
“Navy Blue wasn’t wearing a seat belt,” I said. “And no skid marks.”
“So? He was drunk.”
“Even black-out drunks are aware on some level,” I said. “They hit the brakes even when it’s too late. It’s that animal part of our brain trying to stay alive.”
The chief shifted uncomfortably in his high black cowboy boots which made as much sense as me wearing a Stetson in the Bronx. It was Ohio. Which made me wonder: what the hell are you supposed to wear in Ohio? I wore my standard black uniform of cargo pants, long sleeved shirt and gear belt, along with a vest, plates inserted. My fellow Burney cops tended to leave the plates out, but they’d never been shot at.
“Do you know his wife?” The chief asked.
“Margot Blue? I saw her at the funeral.” Very young and very pretty, she’d also been pretty looped, but it was, after all, the funeral of her husband.
“The little girl Peri is cute but quiet.” Something wrong there, I thought, but that was probably because her daddy was dead.
“Know who Margot Blue’s mother is?”
“Yes.”
“Senator Amy Wilcox,” he said as if he didn’t trust my knowledge, since I wasn’t supposed to think. He waited, perhaps for me to say something, then went on. “The senator doesn’t want anything ugly coming out about her son-in-law’s death. She has let the mayor know this. The mayor has let me know this. I am letting you know. It was an accident, Vince. Leave it alone.” He didn’t sound very enthused about passing on the message. “Get off of that damn thing.”
“Sure, Chief.” I scooted back and touched down in Burney once more. “Anything else?”
He hesitated. “There’s a history to all these people, Vince.” He indicated the town spread out below us. “The Blues were Burney for over a century. The last one, Cleve, Navy’s dad, ran this place. And now we have this development south of town and the new senator is involved in it, and she’s got Cash as her front man, and he’s marrying Lavender Blue this weekend. It’s all connected somehow. Be careful is what I’m saying.”
That was a lot to think about for a guy who wasn’t supposed to. I just nodded. “All right, Chief.”
George sighed. “You should have ticketed Danger.”
“So, she’s not welcome back in Burney?”
He shrugged. “She’s a wild one. Wouldn’t hurt to reel her in.” Then he changed the subject. “Cash’s bachelor party is at JBs tonight. I know you stop by and check on the place sometimes. Might want to do that tonight.”
“Roger that.”
“Take care of yourself, Vince.” He paused and then walked away without another word, got in his big Suburban and drove down the road again.
I got back in the cruiser, thinking about George. He was still upset about Liz Danger, which was just dumb. I’d heard that she’d done something to his campaign posters years ago when he was running for mayor, some stupid kid prank, and he was still mad about it. Possibly because he wasn’t mayor now. Man knew how to hold a grudge.
Liz Danger did not look like a grudge holder. She looked like somebody who wanted to get out of Dodge as soon as possible without stopping to see
her mother. I could understand the feeling. I’d gotten out of the Bronx just before my 18th birthday and been sworn into the military on the day I was of age. She did look like the kind of woman who’d be interesting to get to know better, but she was leaving right away, so I put her out of my mind and decided to check Navy’s car again. The chief might have signed off on the wreck, but I wasn’t ready to. I’d never been able to put it to rest since going down there and seeing Navy’s body.
I pulled out to head back to the highway and Porter’s garage. I had something to check on.
Liz
When Vince the cop and I had pulled up in front of Porter’s Garage, it looked pretty good, still your basic fifties three-bay garage, but the blue and white paint on the building and the bench in front of the office plate glass window was all fresh, and somebody with brains had kept all the signage from when it was built, much nicer than I’d remembered it.
My cousin Molly Blue was waiting for us, blonde and beautiful as ever. She waved to the cop and then said, “I do not believe this, Elizabeth Magnolia Danger, you have finally come home,” and grabbed me in a bone-cracking hug—honest to God, that sign out on the highway should have said 'Welcome to Burney: We Hug’— which was overkill because she’d just seen me six weeks before in New Jersey. Then she said, “You tell me what you’re doing here and how long you can stay!”
“Your mother wrote me to tell me my mother was in trouble and I was a horrible daughter and a disgrace to the family, so I was stopping by on Mom’s birthday and my car broke down,” I told her, distracted for a moment because Vince had put my mother’s bear in the back of Moll’s car and was getting back in the cruiser. “And I missed lunch,” I told Molly, mostly because I was thinking, Maybe I should have invited the cop to lunch. Or something.
Molly blinked at me. “Your mother is fine. I just saw her this morning at the bank.”
I forgot about Vince to think about strangling ML. “Then why the hell did your mother write me that stupid card?”
Molly shrugged. “I do not explain my mother. The woman is insane and getting worse. But at least she brought you home!”
“I’m leaving as soon as Will gets the car back here and fixed.”
Molly shook her head. “Liz, even if Will gets it running today, you won’t make it to Chicago before midnight. Come on, stay in town for the night. We can go to JB’s.” She grinned at me. “Play your cards right, maybe you’ll get lucky.”
“I need out of here by tonight,” I said, but Molly said, “You need lunch!” and pulled me toward her car and I let her because I was hungry.
Five minutes later, we were at The Red Box, the high school hangout/diner/burger joint when we were growing up, its curved red-and-chrome fifties facade forever squatting on the corner next to JB's Bar on Main Street. I think it’s responsible for the passion I have for diners now. I admit I had a moment when Molly parked in front of it. Sitting in a Red Box booth eating burgers and fighting over the oldies jukebox with her had been the best times of my life back then. The world was our oyster. It was just our bad luck our oyster was in Burney and completely devoid of pearls.
Molly pushed the door open, and I followed her in.
It was the way it had been back then, only better: the floor was the same black and white checkerboard only without the cracks and stains, the booths were the same thick red vinyl only without the rips and the duct tape patches, and the smell . . . oh, Lord, french fry grease and hot seared beef, exactly the same as back then, be still my heart.
“Is that you, Lizzie Danger?” Kitty Porter yelled and then I saw her leaning over the counter that ran along the left of the diner, her arms crossed in front of her to balance her because at five foot two, her feet wouldn’t touch the floor if she was leaning that far out. Her hair was the same red it had always been, maybe a little brighter, but her face was sort of . . . odd, not quite right, and then I realized that
was because Kitty Porter had had a face lift. Or as my current client Anemone Patterson would say, “Maintenance, honey.”
“Hey, Kitty.” I shoved the bear into the nearest booth and went over to the counter, and Kitty wrapped an arm around my neck and planted a big smack on my cheek which made me feel a lot better about Burney. “It is so good to see you,” I told her, and meant every word of it.
“Can’t believe you stayed away so long, baby,” she said. “You sit down there, I’m making you a Red Box special.”
“Oh, God, yes.” I sat down on one of the stainless-steel counter stools, its puffy red vinyl top unscarred and impervious to any damage my muddy jeans might do, and watched her turn back to her grill where my burger was already frying. A good diner grill is a precious thing, years of grease seared into it until—
“The boys are gonna be so glad to see you,” Kitty said, picking up some cheese. “Cash is just not gonna believe it.”
Cash again. My pulse kicked up and I told myself it was basic Burney dread and nothing at all to do with Cash. The thing about Cash was that he was smart and funny and ridiculously good-looking—all hot dark eyes and unruly dark hair and dimples and a smile that could make you forget your own name—but he had no short term memory at all when it came to who he was supposed to be kissing, especially when that was me, so the idea that he had been hanging around waiting for me to come home for fifteen years . . . . tempting, but no.
I went over to the booth with the bear and sat down.
Molly shoved over the bear and sat down next to it. “So!” She flipped the charts on the booth’s still oldies jukebox, dropped fifty cents in the slot, pushed a button, and leaned forward. “I am so glad you’re back!”
Strings whined out from the jukebox, and Jeanette Jurado of Exposé began to sing, ‘I’ll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me.’ That song had been ancient back in 2007, but Moll and I had sung it to each other anyway, ...
