“We don’t have to do this now,” she said.
“It’s not like they’re getting pulled into the police station every week. So I’m not sure why . . .”
His voice had changed from the plaintive tone he had used to tell her about the Levins to the touchy one that usually signaled an impending day or two of radio silence. It wasn’t much consolation to Markie that she had the upper hand here. It had been a terrible weekend, but there was a silver lining within her grasp—a newfound closeness between them, a greater degree of mutual respect, where she didn’t lower the hammer like her father would have, and in return, he didn’t shut her out completely. If she kept on about Trevor and the guys, she would strip all the shininess out. “You know what,” she said, “let’s just forget about it for now. I was thinking out loud, mostly, and I shouldn’t have done that. We can talk about it later, when you’re done being grounded. Okay?”
He turned back to her, a grateful half smile on his lips. “Yeah,” he said.
Bullet dodged, Markie thought. For now, and possibly forever. By the time he found someone willing to hire a fourteen-year-old, then got in enough hours to earn $1,000, Trevorandtheguys would hopefully have tired of waiting for him and dropped him from the group. She didn’t believe for a second they were the only kids he knew at school, nor did she worry that if he weren’t part of their little posse, he would spend the rest of high school friendless.
“The thing is,” Jesse said on Monday night, coming up from the basement, “there aren’t a lot of people who’ll hire ninth graders.” He had appeared before the judge that afternoon, and to their tremendous relief, he was given a firm warning but nothing more, his file destroyed. Free to charge ahead with his voluntary restitution plan, he had been on his computer most of the evening, looking for jobs.
Markie looked up from the dining room table, where she was filling out her log sheet and organizing files for the next day. “True,” she said, trying not to gloat. Operation Keep Him Away from the Bad Kids was proceeding exactly as she had hoped.
“So I think my best bet is Trevor’s dad.”
Her heart sank. “Trevor’s dad will hire you?”
“Yeah. He owns a lumberyard. Trevor works there sometimes, like weekends and in the summer. I just talked to him, and he said a couple of guys quit and his dad could use some help. It’s a lot more, you know, physical than I really want, but the pay is, like, amazing. I could pay Mr. Levin super fast.”
“I’m not so sure—”
“It would only be me and Trevor,” he said, rushing in. “None of the others. And we’d be working the entire time, except for, like, a five-minute break now and then, which we wouldn’t even leave the yard for. I’d go straight there and come straight home after. Trevor’s in trouble, too, so he’s not allowed to go anywhere but school, work, and home anyway. And I promise I’ll walk Angel every day before school, like I did today, so you won’t have to deal with her.”
He had taken the dog out for so long that morning that Markie worried he might be late for his first class. He made it in time, though, and Angel was so tired from the outing she dozed most of the day. She fussed twice, and Markie put her on the tie-out, but there were no hijinks—the exhausted dog trotted obediently from the crate to the leash and back again. Markie could hardly complain—it was good for her to get up and move around every few hours anyway, and the brief interruptions hadn’t interfered with her ability to get through a respectable number of files.
Jesse looked at her imploringly, and she turned away, unable to withstand his earnestness. He had found himself a job, and a physical one at that—talk about self-imposed penance! How many teenagers would go to such lengths to right their wrongs? What reasonable parent would stand in the way?
She tried to stifle her disappointment. This was not the months-long job search she had been hoping for, the long delay she was counting on to keep him safe from the influence of the other boys. He would be plugged into the group as much as ever if he spent afternoons and weekends with Trevor. So much for distance, for them getting tired of waiting for him.
“So can I?” he asked.
Markie racked her brain for alternatives, anyone who might hire a fourteen-year-old. People she knew from their former life—she would force herself back over that creaky bridge if she had to. People Kyle knew.
“Oh!” she said, having suddenly remembered Kyle’s friend Danny, who owned an office supply store.
Kyle had shown up with him at dinnertime about a year earlier, explaining, as she hastily set another place at the table and redistributed their three-person meal among four plates, that they had been pals since high school and lost touch. “Until we literally smacked into each other in an aisle in his store a few hours ago! And I couldn’t very well just shake his hand and say, ‘See you in another twenty years.’ So I dragged him out for a few drinks and told him he had no choice but to come have dinner with us.”
Danny, who had looked sheepish when Kyle claimed “a few drinks,” also seemed surprised that his old friend hadn’t called or texted his wife hours earlier to let her know about their dinner guest. But Markie told him it was fine, he should stay, and by the time the meal was over, he was clasping a hand on Jesse’s shoulder and saying the boy should look him up if he ever needed a job.
“You seem a lot more upright than your old man,” he’d joked.
Kyle had laughed, too, and said, “No, really, I meant it—I’ll get the next round for sure,” but Markie had a feeling that the afternoon’s drinks weren’t all Danny was talking about.
“I have an idea,” she told Jesse. “But I need to check into it first.”
“So I should tell Trevor no?”
“For now,” she said.
Markie sent her text the moment Jesse returned to the basement: Kyle, we really need to talk about Jesse. Call me. She had tried him a few times on Sunday, to no avail, and Jesse had had no luck reaching him earlier in the day before they left for court.
Two hours later, as she was getting ready for bed, her phone dinged with his response.
Been tied up. Call you first thing in the AM.
Chapter Eighteen
Markie checked her watch after Jesse left for school the next morning: it was just after seven. Knowing her ex and his loose interpretation of the phrase “first thing,” she predicted she could get a few hours of work done before she heard from him, so she ushered Angel into her crate, settled into a chair at the dining room table, and opened her first file.