I shook my head and lurched to my feet. I realized dazedly that I was wearing my old Darrow uniform: a white blouse, green tartan skirt, black tights, the beat-up black Steve Madden ankle boots that had seen me through four years of school.
“Seriously. I can call someone.”
I pressed a hand to my throbbing head, and stumbled away from the woman.
What had happened? Why hadn’t I made it to Wincroft? Then I remembered the thought that had slipped into my mind as I’d been falling.
It was what Vida had said, about the ride she’d given Jim.
Some dingy section of town. Dollar stores. A pet store. The parking lot had some man in a chicken costume handing out heart balloons.
“Why did Jim want to go there?” Cannon had asked her.
Maybe he wanted to eat fried chicken and buy a pet iguana? I have no clue.
Fried chicken and hearts had turned up again in the coupon inside Jim’s empty case file.
$5 off a bin of Honey Love Fried Chicken. Soul Mate Special!
Finally, it had appeared in an email I’d read in Edgar Mason’s in-box. A restaurant owner had been asking for another loan. I hear your concerns, but it’s time to expand on the line of frozen fried chicken dinners with romance-related flavor names.
I staggered past the cashier, blinking at the laminated advertisement on the counter.
ALL-NEW! Honey Love Fried Chicken Organic Chicken Dinners, now available in the frozen-food aisle at a supermarket near you. Try our original flavor! Honey Love Mesquite.
“May I take your order, miss?”
The teenage boy behind the cash register was staring at me. With a fitful smile I shoved open the door and moved outside, steadying myself on a Newport Daily News vending machine. After a moment, I realized I was staring at someone wearing a yellow cartoon chicken costume passing out heart-shaped balloons to passersby. The strip mall was exactly as Vida had described it. There was a handful of people loitering around the parking lot.
I leaned down to check the newspaper date.
Friday. May 14. Last year.
I’d managed to get it right. After all, I remembered the night I’d watched Jim drive away with Vida as if it were yesterday.
An elderly man was pushing a shopping cart loaded with shopping bags past me.
“Excuse me?” I asked. “What time is it?”
He checked his watch. “Twelve-forty-nine.”
Vida had said she’d dropped Jim off around eight or nine o’clock, which meant I had nearly eight hours to kill until he appeared. I hoped the wake would last that long. If Jim even did appear. It was a long shot. It also wasn’t the worst connection to make. Whoever had confiscated the papers from Jim’s case file at the Warwick police station hadn’t looked twice at the coupon, but what if it had been actual evidence? What if it had been stuck in Jim’s file because the detectives had been tracking his movements during the final days of his life, and they’d discovered he’d come here to this complex, to this restaurant?
My head was still pounding. I slipped along the covered sidewalk, past a liquor store, a Dollar Mart, a pet store called Man’s Best Friend. I had to change my clothes. If Jim did come here, the restaurant was small. He’d spot me immediately. But I had no money to buy clothes. I watched the people come and go, men in faded T-shirts racing into the liquor store, women hauling toddlers, an old woman bent over ninety degrees pushing a cart. When I spotted a smiling woman leaving a stationery store walking a Pomeranian, I approached her.
“Excuse me, ma’am? I’m hoping you might help me. I need a change of clothes—”
She picked up her dog with a horrified look and climbed into her car.
I ended up going into every store at the shopping center, striding brazenly through Employees Only swinging doors into back storerooms, janitors’ closets, and cargo unloading areas, to see if I could find some kind of spare uniform. I managed to steal a pair of khakis from Man’s Best Friend, a hoodie from a manager’s closet inside the Stop & Shop. I asked an old man pulling a pint of Ben & Jerry’s out of the freezer if I could have his baseball cap. There must have been something totally desperate, or strange, or otherworldly on my face, because he handed it to me without a word and quickly wheeled his cart away.
I hurried into a Chinese restaurant, Fu Mao Noodle, and changed in the bathroom, grabbing a handful of fortune cookies by the register as I left. I sat eating them on a bench outside the pet store facing the parking lot, a feeling of dread in my chest. Small opportunities are the beginnings of great enterprises. You are the architect of your fortune. Big journeys begin with a single step. I had to change benches three times, because every one I sat on, the wood began to splinter and crack under me. One even collapsed in half.
The longer I waited, the more afraid I was that I’d been right to track Jim here, that he’d actually appear. Was he meeting some other girl? What had preoccupied him, been so shameful that he couldn’t tell me about it? What had he been so afraid of?
At five minutes after eight a beat-up red Nissan pulled into the parking lot, a For Sale sign in the back window. It slinked up to Honey Love Fried Chicken and the passenger door opened. Jim climbed out. Black T-shirt. Jeans.
I could see Vida behind the wheel. Jim entered the restaurant. Vida waited a moment, as if to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Then she drove off, exactly as she’d said.
I waited another minute. Then I darted along the covered walkway, ignoring the fact that every column was spotted with black mold.
I peered through the glass door. Jim was standing at the counter, his back to me.
I quickly slipped inside and took a seat at an empty table by the window.
“Call him again,” I heard Jim say. He sounded angry.
The woman he was speaking with—the one who’d shaken me awake—was mystified.
“I just did. He said he’d be right out—”
“Call him again.”
Frightened, she grabbed the phone, dialing.
“He says he’ll be right out.”
Seconds later, a Hispanic man with a thick mustache appeared from a back room. He was slight, midforties, a kind face.
“Jim. It’s been too long. How are you?”
“We need to talk.”
“I’m about to jump on a conference call. Why don’t you come back after closing?”
“We’re going to talk now.”
Disconcerted, the man beckoned Jim to follow him. I slid to my feet, watching them disappear through the back door. I waited another minute and headed after them, pausing to hear another door slam before I darted inside. The kitchen was in front of me. Beyond that, there appeared to be a back office. The door was closed, but it looked thin, and hurrying up to it, I could make out the voices easily enough.
“I’LL ASK YOU ONE MORE TIME. WHO IS ESTELLA ORNATO?”
“What are you talking about?”
“ESTELLA ORNATO!”
“She—well, yes, she’s my daughter—”
“And?”
“And?”
“Four years old. She died last year. That jog your memory?”
“Jim, please, let’s not do this here—”
“DO NOT PICK UP THAT PHONE OR I SWEAR—”
“Jim—”
“FOR ONCE WOULD SOMEONE TELL ME THE TRUTH?”
“Who told you? Where is this coming from?”
“Your brother wrote me a letter. ESTELLA DID NOT DIE IN A CAR ACCIDENT—”
“Jim. Jim. Now, hear me out—”
The voices quieted. Abruptly something large smashed against the door.
“TELL ME THE TRUTH OR I SWEAR TO GOD—”
“Excuse me,” said a woman. “You’re not authorized to be here.”
I turned. It was the redhead. She was indignant, hands on her hips.
“I have an interview with your manager,” I blurted.
She squinted at me, puzzled. A second deafening crash from inside the office was disturbing enough that she quickly forgot me and went hurrying back to the kitchen to confer, wide-eyed, with the teenager behind the cash register.
“DID MY FATHER PAY FOR THIS? AND THIS? AND THIS?”
There was a high-pitched cry, followed by a moan. Alarmed, I pushed open the door, barging in to see Jim throwing a bag of golf clubs on Mr. Ornato, now cowering on the floor in a fetal position. Jim started kicking him in the stomach.
“Jim,” I said.