“They hatch in two days?”
“Then we add the motor oil. And check under the microscope every ten minutes for an hour. To see if they’re still kicking.”
“Okay.”
Drew looked up at the plastic containers, the cloudy water, the shrimp far too small to see.
“I don’t want to add it, really,” he said. “It seems mean.”
“It’s not mean,” she said. “It’s nature.”
The phone call came just as they finished.
“Devon,” Katie answered, her voice shaking. “Devon.”
“Mom!” Devon’s voice, like a claw over Katie’s heart. “Guess what? Everything’s back. Coach T. is holding practice today. Can you believe it? Mrs. Chu’s here at school. She’s going to drive me and Cheyenne.”
She sounded so buoyant, as buoyant as Katie had heard her in months. No, it was impossible, Katie decided. What Drew had said. Impossible. Drew heard it wrong, had the wrong night, had confused things. He had been dreaming all along.
“Devon, no,” she said. “I’m coming to get you right now. I’m taking you home. We need to talk.”
“I can’t hear you, Mom,” she said, Cheyenne’s squeals in the background, the sound of doors slamming, an engine starting, and Molly Chu’s excitable voice, Hurry up, girls. There’s bound to be traf—
“Devon, wait!” she said, but Devon didn’t hear.
When Katie tried to call back, she got voice mail. When she called Molly, she got voice mail. As she set the phone down, it rang again.
“Kirsten.”
“Did you hear? Coach T. is back. That sly dog, he must’ve known his days were numbered. Listen, can you take Jordan? I’m at work and—”
“Devon’s on her way with Molly.”
“Goddamn it,” Kirsten said. “Goddamn it.”
“So she misses today.”
“I bet you’d like that.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry,” Kirsten said quickly. Then she sighed, her voice wobbly. “But I have a career—”
“We all work,” Katie said. “All of us.”
“—I have clients. Sometimes I think I’m just working to keep Jordan in those goddamned two-hundred-dollar leotards. Don’t you ever get tired?”
“I’m tired all the time,” Katie replied, her hand covering her face, the smell of the salt under her fingernails. “Kirsten, I have to go—”
“You and Eric just never miss a beat. The gym in the basement, the library of Olympics DVDs. When Devon’s down on the floor, you and Eric in your matching BelStars shirts doing the counts with her, moving when she moves. God, I just don’t have that kind of time,” Kirsten said, sighing. “And Jordan blames me for it. I know she does.”
“Kirsten,” Katie said, a voice coming from somewhere, a voice hard and cool. “I know you wish Jordan were half the athlete Devon is. And I know you wish that the difference was just a matter of you having more time to devote to her. And it’s not because you don’t commit like we commit. It’s because Jordan isn’t that good. She’s ordinary.”
“Jesus, Katie—”
“And when you have an extraordinary child,” Katie said, a heat under her eyes, “you’ll do anything for her.”
“This is the last time, Mr. Watts,” she said, opening the screen door for him. “I promise.”
The hush the antibiotics brought on. Drew was sound asleep in his bed, his hands still sticky from salt too.
“I just have to get Devon. And I’ll be back.”
“You don’t have to explain,” Mr. Watts said, stepping inside. “You never did.”
Three miles into the twenty-eight-mile drive to BelStars, she passed the original Weaver’s Wagon, the only one where the wheels on the sign really turned. Where Ryan had been a line cook, and where Gwen had her office, her fancy leather-bound checkbook binder, her sterling-silver check-signing pen.
The truck in front of her slowed and turned into its lot.
Night Owl Distributors
Beer ? Fine Wine ? Distilled Spirits
Its orange logo was a pair of owl eyes, one winking tipsily. It looked familiar. Where had she seen it before?
Then it came to her. Just a few days ago, the doodle on Eric’s notepad as he talked to Gwen. A pair of slanty eyes, a V between them, like a cartoon owl.
Behind the wheel, the driver wore a cap with the same logo.
He looked familiar too.
She watched as he drove through the lot to the restaurant’s loading area.
And she followed.
Iced coffee in hand, Gwen stood on the loading dock as the men emptied the truck and another one, a side of beef painted blistering pink on the side, pulled up.
The driver walked over to her, clipboard outstretched. Squinting, Katie watched him, his dewlapped face and the ambling way he moved.
Tugging at his cap, he looked just like he had when Katie had first seen him at the police station, holding the door for Helen Beck, tipping his brim at her.