The Second Chance (Inferno Falls Book Three) Read online

  “Yes?”

  “Grab the mop.”

  I look down. Someone’s dishes have spilled. I have no idea whose tray it is until I see Abigail rush around the corner. She’s dragging one of the big garbage cans and has a broom and a dustpan.

  Ed is still staring at me.

  “Get the mop.”

  I squat and start gathering shards of plate and bits of food. Fortunately, it looks like this happened on clearing a table, not bringing food to customers. If it were the latter and if this was Abigail’s table, she’d be facing paying for food she didn’t eat, too.

  “Get the mop,” Roxanne repeats, marching onto the scene. I notice that she’s not getting it, even though it’s right behind her. Even though this wasn’t my doing. Even though I’m already helping and she’s not.

  “You get it, Roxanne.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll get it,” Abigail says. The shards are mostly gone. I’ve taken the small broom and dustpan, so she stands and threads between Roxanne and stools lining the front counter. Roxanne makes no attempt to move.

  She comes back, and I ask her what happened.

  “Did you see that guy who looks like a bird?”

  I almost laugh despite how irritated I really should be. I’ve developed some sort of immunity because I know there’s less than a half hour left. I don’t know if Mackenzie and I will get ice cream again, go to the library to pick up some new books, head to the park and feed the ducks, or what. I only know it’s better than being here by a thousand miles, and my time on the clock is almost up.

  “I did.”

  “He bumped into me when he was dodging around Jen.”

  “You should have had both hands on the plates at all times,” I say. I’m quoting something Ed would or will soon say, and Abigail sees it and almost smiles. She’s normally reserved and harder to crack with mirth, but she’s been almost obnoxiously happy lately. It’s not that she loves working here, though she seems to mind it less than me. It’s that she seems to have found some purpose and comfort: the first in songwriting for some local musicians, the second in one of said musician’s arms. I’m glad for her. But it just reminds me of what I don’t have, where I’ve found my own dead end after a promising life’s start, and how unlikely any of it seems to change any time soon. Abigail can take risks. If the band she writes for decides to tour, she can go. She’s not stuck in this town. I am, rooted by responsibilities I feel guilty resenting her.

  “I know, right?” she says. The customers have mostly stopped paying attention as we clean up the last of the mess, Ed has moved toward the office, and Roxanne, despite having plenty of tables of her own, is going with him. She has seniority, but no more official power than any of us. Unfortunately, she happens to be a competent waitress and an extraordinary suck-up. She manages to flirt with Ed without getting his hands all over her. She might be making denial-and-promise work for her that I somehow haven’t seen, whereas Ed doesn’t respect me because I’m not swatting him demurely away. Probably because it’s pointless. Probably because this is honestly the best job I can hope for right now, and rocking the boat isn’t an option.

  “Hey,” Abigail says, eyeing Ed and Roxanne as they vanish. “Do you think they’re hooking up?”

  “Ugh. Don’t put that picture in my head.”

  “I’ll bet he’s got birthmarks everywhere.”

  I make a face, playing along, but I don’t reply. Yes, Abigail has come out of her shy shell quite a lot. I’m glad for her, really I am. I’m not jealous. And if I repeat those things enough, I’m sure I’ll start to believe them.

  “I heard Roxanne earlier. Is Ed really going to charge you for that guy’s burger?”

  “He’d better not.” I smile, but that’s not an answer. He might. Just because he’d better not doesn’t mean I’m not buying a burger today, and just as with Ed’s inappropriate hands, I’ll bet I let it happen without saying a word.

  I peek at the clock. Twenty-two minutes.

  The weather is fine. The park — the good one, not the shitty one near Little Amsterdam — has a great walking trail that circles the lake and heads into the hills. There’s a depot by the water where you can rent remote control boats. Mackenzie likes to watch people steer them, so maybe that’s what we should do. You can feed the ducks farther down, and I’ve already got my eye on some bread the Pit has earmarked to throw away.

  Maybe, to make up for all the times I’ve disappointed M lately, we should rent one of the boats ourselves and steer it around for a bit. How much can it cost? Ten bucks tops? I’m not exactly hemorrhaging money, but I can swing ten bucks. The rent for our tiny house is cheap, and I’m excellent at stretching the food budget. I won’t take money from Mom and Dad, but we could definitely take them up on a dinner invite to save a few dollars. Mom’s a great cook. Dad’s a couch gourmand. They’re fine company and love Mackenzie to pieces. Everyone wins.

  I’m in the back room. Stocking a tray. Time has become liquid as my thoughts stray to the good times coming … just sixteen minutes. For the first time in history, time is flying even though I’m not having fun. In an attempt to move things faster and forestall any possibility that Ed will charge me for the table 4 burger, I resolve to serve my ass off. To wait tables like my life depends on it. I can sprint through the rest of my shift. I can do this. If you could enter the Olympics as a waitress, I’d be determined to qualify.

  I drop off the waiting orders. Nobody wants anything else, except for the birdlike guy who wants ketchup and honey, hopefully not for use on the same food. I refill coffees, even taking care of Roxanne’s customers just to rub her face in it a little. Table 4’s burger is up, so I take it to the table and manage to drop it off with a smile and a somewhat sincere “Enjoy!”

  I refill water glasses.

  I ring out a group that’s finished, then clear and wipe their table even though Travis, the busboy, is supposed to do it.

  I’m riding high until I return to table 4 to ask Mr. Picky if he likes what he got after eating half of two separate things for free, and find the table empty.

  I’m clearing the order from the system when Ed comes up behind me, too close, his body right against my ass.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asks.

  “I had a dine and dash.”

  “Did you go after them?”

  “What, on my motorcycle with my gun out and my sirens blazing?” My tone is short. I’ve gone from low to high and back to low in no time at all. I feel like punching someone. Normally, this would be a case of deflection waiting to happen, but punching Ed would be spot on, since I want to punch him most times anyway.

  “Very funny. What were they, friends of yours?”

  “Yes. We’re very close.”

  “You’re paying for their order, Sweetheart.”

  I spin. I was using one of the register pens to strike out the receipt, and nearly jab it into his neck by accident. Then I almost jab it into his neck on purpose.

  “They ran out!”

  “After you gave them two free meals.”

  “They demanded those meals!”

  “Roxanne says you just handed them over. Didn’t even try.”

  “Oh, Roxanne says it? Well whoopity fucking doo, Ed! I guess we’d better do what Roxanne says!”

  “Watch yourself, Maya. You’re on thin ice.”

  My temper flares. Not only am I catching shit for doing nothing wrong; now I’ve committed unknown sins in the past without experiencing them in the present. “Why am I on thin ice?”

  “Friday, for one. You left early.”

  “I had to pick my daughter up at school! Jen said she’d cover for me!”

  “I didn’t approve that.”

  My temper slips another notch. Ed didn’t approve my leaving because Ed wasn’t there. He was supposed to be, but he left. Nobody knows where he went. He does that. We think he goes on walks, but it’s possible he’s stalking pretty women as they pass, buyin
g flowers and following them until they duck around a corner and manage to shake him.

  “There was nobody in here. The place was dead. It was fifteen damned minutes, and I clocked out, so you didn’t even pay me.”

  “You’ve been asking for a lot of time off.”

  “Asking! Not getting!”

  “But every week now. Several times a week, in fact.”

  I feel my cheeks flush. I’ve been told I have a redhead’s temper, but it’s strange because neither of my parents have red hair and both are totally chill. Boring, yes. Conservative, judgmental, maybe even a little racist? For sure. But not angry and not apt to go off like I do now. This is classic Maya: last of the kids in line, the baby, the one who got to know her parents like wardens rather than buddies. No wonder I acted out.

  “I keep asking because you never give me the time! Just give me one goddamned day off, and I’ll stop asking, Ed!”

  “Why do you want time off so badly?”

  I almost snort at that one. Of course he wouldn’t understand. Ed, as far as I can tell, has no one. He seems to enjoy reading thrillers and playing computer games, so my best guess is that he goes home each night and does both until he passes out. Although I’m sure there’s some disturbing masturbation happening as well, possibly with some unspeakable fetish.

  I try to calm myself. I try to forget the food he’s threatened to make me pay for.

  “I feel like I never see my daughter. She’s in school and then goes right to the after-school program.”

  Vague sadness threatens, and I feel my anger turning to something else. I could lash out at Ed, but it’s me who’s done something wrong. Mackenzie stays with other people all day every day, and by the time I come home, I’m too beat to do anything with her beyond watching TV. I feel like she’s growing up without me, raised by a committee that I’m not even on. Once upon a time we were friends — and champ that she is, Mackenzie keeps trying to be mine. Every time I break a promise, she forgives me. Every time I make a new promise, she believes it.

  And, I think, with a load of guilt, whenever I do manage a bit of energy, I spend it on myself. On releasing my tension. On finding a man to hold me, knowing it’s wrong, knowing what people would think. Every time, I make excuses: This is how I cope; this is how I was programmed; this is how I reacted when my parents tied me down, gave me the gift of shame, and sent me to Jesus. But it’s all a lie. I’m twenty-seven now. I’m a grown woman and should be able to feel an itch … and walk away without scratching it.

  My daughter deserves better. She deserves all I have to give because she’s always given me all she has.

  She didn’t ask to be born. She didn’t ask to grow up without a father. She’s my precious little gem, and I refuse to let her down anymore — be it due to my own weakness or to a tyrant like my boss.

  That’s why today, fuck it all, I’m going to rent her one of those little boats. We’re going to get ice cream. We’ll feed the ducks and talk heart to heart about all that matters to her, all that bothers her, all she feels, and all she fears. We’ll even go roller-skating afterward. Because today’s mommy-daughter date isn’t just about today. It’s about all the times I’ve had to bail for reasons she pretends to understand but doesn’t.

  “This is the job,” Ed says. “You took the job, so you can either do it or find a new one.”

  “I’m just asking for some flexibility. A weekend day off here and there. I’ll work longer shifts if they can be less frequent. I just need the freedom to leave fifteen minutes early when Mackenzie needs a ride, or when there’s … ” I sigh, putting on my most eminently reasonable tone. “When there’s not even anyone here that needs serving, Ed.”

  Ed watches me for a few seconds with his beady little rodent eyes.

  “Nobody here asked you to get knocked up.”

  Before I can lash out, there’s a scream from the kitchen. I hold my tongue, furious but in abeyance, until I see what’s happened. When I arrive behind Ed’s bulk, we both see that Carla, one of the new girls, must have tried to slice a sandwich for one of her customers rather than letting a chef do it, and now she’s holding one hand in the other, drops of blood pattering food and floor.

  The kitchen clock says I have ten minutes until I can leave this nightmare shift.

  But Ed, his eyes still hard as if restarting our in-progress argument, looks right at me as Carla is helped out to someone’s car with a towel around her hands, presumably on the way to the emergency room.

  “Okay, fine. You don’t have to pay for the dine-and-dashers’ food, but only because you’ll be covering the rest of Carla’s shift.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Maya

  It’s late enough when I get home that not only did I fail to pick Mackenzie up directly from school like I’d double, triple, I’ll-get-it-right-this-time promised, I didn’t even get to tuck her in. By the time I’m off and out, she’s not even at my house. I have to go to my parents’ and pick her up. I tell myself that if she’s asleep, I’ll just ask Mom and Dad to keep her and try again in the morning. I’ll have to find some other way, if that happens, to make myself feel better. I have several ideas how to do that. None are good.

  Dad is reading the paper when I arrive. He lowers it slightly, peering at me over the top of his glasses.

  “Hey, Baby Girl.”

  “Hey, Dad. Where’s Mom?”

  “What, you don’t want to talk to me?”

  “Okay. What’s up, Daddy?”

  “Inflation,” he says then folds the paper with an air of the-world’s-going-go-hell-and-what-you-gonna-do, takes off his brown-frame glasses, and sets both aside. “I thought you were done with double shifts. You must really like it there.”

  “As if. One of the girls cut herself, so I had to stay and take over for her.”

  “Well, that was really good of you, Pumpkin. She gonna be okay?”

  “I’m sure.” I look around. “Where is Mom?”

  “I don’t know. Making more doilies to sell on the computer.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  He shrugs. My dad doesn’t understand technology. Even the technology he should understand, and he’s not superold. I mean, it’s not like he was Methuselah when AOL came online. I always understood on an intellectual level that I was born late and that my siblings were nearly old enough that they could almost have been my parents, but to me, Mom and Dad were just Mom and Dad, not old Mom and Dad. In a way, the fact that they’d been around the block with the others before me was a real advantage because they’d already seen it all — and on the flip side, hadn’t seen anything like me. I’m sure my brother and sisters never sneaked out of the house at night, so they never saw it coming when I did. I was good at being quiet and never got caught, until I got caught in the most obvious way possible, when Mackenzie started stirring inside me.

  “Thanks for picking Mackenzie up.”

  “It was good timing. I’d just finished up the green Victorian.” He brightens and sits up. “You want to see it?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Oh. It’s a lot like that first house. The one I made you?”

  “I remember.” How could I forget? I pretended to be into dolls for years after I’d stopped caring about them just so Dad’s gift would get use. Then I set it up as a kind of shrine, furnished but not active. It’s still up there, in my old room, where Mackenzie is probably sleeping now.

  “Lots of black kids at that after-school program,” Dad says, as if it’s something to ponder. Something to jaw about while you smoke around the old barrel with other white men.

  “Daddy!”

  “What? There are.”

  On cue, my mother enters the room. She’s wearing a house dress, and her hair is somehow … well, not up, per se, but still definitely in a mess above her head that I would never think to attempt. I can see dried glue on her hands. I want to ask, but I’m a little afraid she’ll tell me today’s Etsy craft involves gluing googly eyes
to clamshells. It’s happened before.

  “What are you going on about now, Arthur?”

  “I just said there’s a lot of black kids at Mackenzie’s after-school program.”

  “Oh, yes,” says my mother.

  “That’s … that’s nice, you guys.”

  “Am I supposed to pretend there aren’t black kids there? I like black kids.”

  “That’s even better. Maybe you could get a sign that says as much, and put it on the side of your van.”

  “Maya, be nice,” Mom says.

  “I don’t know why this is a problem. I just made a comment. It’s not like I said there’s anything wrong with it. Lots of black folks in Inferno Falls in general these days. Mexicans, too. Didn’t used to be this way when you kids were growing up. But I don’t have anything against them. They’re mostly just like us. I say hi to all of them when I find them.”

  “Jesus, Dad.” He makes it sound like a vaguely racist scavenger hunt.

  After I speak, they both look at me. I flinch and sense a reminder not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but after all this time the stare does plenty. The understanding filters between us, and I stay mute in penance, my eyes flicking down despite my impatience and the stress that’s still threatening to make me do things I know I’d better not do. I feel torn, and the tear makes me feel like confessing in the holy spirit that’s rippled through the room. Because I want them to tell me Mackenzie is still awake so I can take her home — but I want just as badly for them to say she’s gone for the night and I may as well go home alone. I feel horrible that half of me wants my daughter unavailable, but the pressure is hard, right now, to deny. And this despite my earlier convictions. I can’t help it. After all this time, it’s almost a hardwired response. I don’t know how else to deal, how else to make the darkness retreat when it knocks.

  An unfair thought flicks through my mind as I stand on my parents’ carpet, feeling horny and horrible:

  Damn you, Grady.