I think of Hot Mama’s voice in the garage.
If one day we call you, you remember who opened the road.
My stomach turns.
“What will she ask me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
Lottie smiles faintly. “Look at that mouth coming back.”
“What will she ask?”
“I said I don’t know. Hot Mama plays long games. Maybe nothing for years. Maybe a call tomorrow. Maybe she only wanted to settle a debt to Caroline and see if Mike Welles’s girl had enough spine to keep breathing.”
“My mother owed her too?”
“Your mother owed a lot of people a lot of things. Some good. Some ugly.”
I grip the table again.
“What happened with Caroline?”
“That’s Hot Mama’s story.”
Then the front door opens.
Derby steps in first.
His eyes find me immediately, scanning. Always scanning. Behind him comes Legend.
Legend looks different than he did when I left. Tired. Hard. A bruise under one eye of his heart if not his face. Sophie isn’t with him, and that absence makes the room feel colder.
He carries a set of keys.
My pulse jumps.
Lottie looks at the keys, then at Legend. “Well, hell.”
Legend ignores her.
He walks to me.
Not to Lottie.
Not to Derby.
Me.
“I need to show you something,” he says.
His voice is gruff in that way I’m beginning to recognize as emotion with its teeth clenched.
I look at Derby.
He nods once.