Life is Sweet (4 page)

“But—”

“Don't worry about it. You aren't responsible.”

“I wasn't paying attention,” she said. “To which pump I was at, I mean. I always go to self-service places. And it's just so trivial!”

“It's happened before,” Walt confessed. “I . . . I haven't been getting enough sleep at night.”

He looked sheepish, as if part of him longed to scurry away. Yet he kept his eyes on her—a direct, searching gaze that seemed reluctant to let go.

She shifted uncomfortably. She wished he wouldn't look at her quite so intently. Maybe he'd seen
Me Minus You
at some point. Or maybe he was just a weirdo. “Anyway, I hope you can find something better than this.”

“Me too.” He didn't look very optimistic, though. He ambled away, a discouraged Eeyore of a man.

Becca sagged back into her car. As she was pulling out, her headlights beamed straight onto Walt walking along the shoulder of the road.

He didn't have a car?

Alongside him, she tapped the brakes and lowered the passenger window. “Can I give you a lift?”

He hesitated. Maybe she should have, too. Offering a stranger a ride on a dark night wasn't the smartest move, but she'd feel stupid taking back the offer now. And she had lost the guy his job. The least she could do was not let him walk home.

Walt got in, and as he was buckling the seat belt, she pulled out her cell phone and speed-dialed the first number that came up, which was Pam's. “Hi, it's me. I'm going to be a little late meeting you.”

“Becca?” Pam sounded understandably confused. “I'm at home, and—wait, what are you talking about?”

“Remember that guy from this morning, the one in front of the store? I'm giving him a lift home.”

“You're
what?
”

“It's a long story, but I'm taking him to somewhere on . . .” She turned to Walt. “Where is it?”

“The Marquis apartments on Ferber Road,” Walt said.

Becca tried not to frown.

“Oh God—did I hear that right?” Pam moaned into the phone. “You're driving some old vagrant out to Ferber Road? Are you insane?”

“Exactly,” Becca answered in a measured tone. “I should be getting back to you in about, let's say, ten minutes?”

“One second past ten minutes, I'm calling the police.”

“Perfect,” Becca said. “Cheerio!”

After she shoved the phone back into her pocket, she caught Walt watching her. “You shouldn't be doing this,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Giving rides to strangers.”

She attempted a laugh. “Probably not.”

“It's no joke. Maybe you don't know the crazy criminal types that are out there.”

“But you're an expert on them, I guess.”

“After eight-plus years in the penitentiary? Yeah, I'd call myself an expert.”

Oh great.

“I'm trying to do you a favor here,” she reminded him.

Her answer only seemed to agitate him.
Terrific.
An agitated ex-con.

“Didn't you hear me?” he asked. “I said I'd done time.”

“Yes, I got that.” How much longer until Pam called the police?

“Pull over to the side of the road and let me out,” he said. “I don't want to trouble you more than I have.”

“We're almost there.” Also, the last thing she wanted to do at the moment was stop the car on a dark road.

She hooked a right turn onto Ferber. The Marquis wasn't far. It was an old motel that had been turned into a sort of flophouse for the poorest of the poor and migrant workers. A few years ago, Pam had spearheaded an effort to have the city condemn the building and buy the land, claiming it harbored a bad element. Becca had thought the whole thing was a tempest in a teapot stirred up by hysterical home owners.

Now, as she approached, she caught a glimpse of teenagers hunched against a wall, sizing up her vehicle. Overhead, on the second-story passage, a young boy and a toddler in a diaper leaned through the balcony railing, watching the teens.

Walt was watching the young men, too. “Let me out here,” he said when she was still a hundred feet or so away.

Eight-plus years in prison. He knew best.

She stopped.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said.

She would never understand what came over her, but in the next moment something sounding very much like her own voice blurted out, “If you need work to tide you over, you can help out at the cake shop.”

That impulse control problem. She really needed to get a handle on it.

“That's kind of you,” Walt answered. “But baking's not my thing.”

She should have been relieved that he was turning her down. She'd offered, he'd refused. End of story. No one could say she hadn't tried to make amends. Instead, she argued, “You don't have to bake. You could help me out doing odd jobs, or making deliveries. Not permanently, but—well, I know how it is when money's tight.”

“I'd never have thought that,” he said.

“Yeah, well.” She nodded toward the two kids. “There but for the grace of God and a hardworking mom.” A sitcom nest egg hadn't hurt, either.

A long silence stretched.

“I'm serious,” she said. “My mom worked like a mule. I used to almost resent it, but now I understand. Life is hard when you're on your own.”

Walt sat with his head drooping. “Listen, Rebecca—”

“Becca,” she corrected.

“Becca.” He took a breath. “I told you I was in jail, but I didn't tell you everything. I didn't say what for, or—”

She cut him off. “I don't need to know everything.” Some sordid story. “Did you assault anybody?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly.”

This guy wasn't exactly his own best press agent.

“Did you ever hurt a child?” she asked.

“No.” His lips clamped firmly shut.

“The bakery opens to customers at eleven. I'm usually there by nine.”

He hesitated, almost seeming to agonize over whether to reject her offer, but finally reached for the door. “I'll see you at nine, then.”

As she drove away, the triumphant rush of do-gooder euphoria was followed fast by a chaser of dread. Eight years in prison. What did it mean to “not exactly” assault someone?

 

Maybe the first sign of being over the hill was when you liked the music in the grocery store more than what played on the radio in your own car. But who wouldn't be relieved to hear Rod Stewart singing granny songs after being stuck in the Justin Bieber mobile?

Matthew dug in his pocket for the list he'd scribbled. “We need bread—something wheaty.”

“But not crunchy,” Olivia specified. “That stuff you bought last time was like cardboard. Even Grover wouldn't eat it.”

“Okay. First, though—”

Olivia cut him off. “I'm gonna go look at shampoo, okay?”

Shampoo wasn't on the list. Not that he cared, but he wondered what else was missing. “I didn't know you needed any.”

“I didn't say I was going to
buy
shampoo. I just want to look at it.”

“You're going to look at shampoo,” he repeated in an honest effort to understand.

She bobbed on her heels. “Yeah.”

“Okay, but—”

As soon as the word
okay
left his mouth, she bolted.

He jerked a cart free from the pile at the front of the store and made his way toward the produce. He grabbed the easy stuff first—bananas, apples, grapes. If Nicole were here, she would be lingering over kiwis and pinching mangos for ripeness, but even though he vowed to do a better job than he had been preparing food from scratch, that level of shopping was beyond him. He did linger in front of a two-dollar pineapple, wondering how much effort it would take to reduce it to edible chunks, before he wheeled on toward the dairy section.

A man with a toddler in his cart advanced on him from the opposite direction, hailing him with a smile. “Matthew!”

Recognition hit Matthew, followed by panic.
Name, name.
He swallowed.
Jim? Jack? Jeff?

“Dave,” the guy said.

“Dave,” Matthew blurted, as if the name had been on the tip of his tongue. Dave was one of Nicole's work people, a face he saw at Christmas parties and never thought about again for the following twelve months. He hadn't even known Dave and his wife—what's-her-name—lived in Leesburg, but they must. Doubtful there would be any other reason he would be wandering around a grocery store at nine at night with a toddler. The kid's lips had an orange halo from the open bag of chips in the basket. She looked up at Matthew, bored and sleepy as she stuffed another Cheeto in and smacked on it.

“I guess you're getting pretty lonely right about now what with Nicole out on the West Coast,” Dave said.

“Oh, surviving.”

“Great opportunity for her, though. I could see why she was raring to go.”

“Yeah.”

“Nicole's brilliant,” Dave said. “I mean, she has to be brilliant to have been chosen to go out there with Bob and his team.”

“Right.” He remembered Bob better because he was Nicole's boss. His was the name that came up most often when she griped about work.

As the kid in the basket stuffed another Cheeto in her mouth, Dave leaned on the cart and dropped his voice to a concerned murmur. “I ran into Erin the other day.”

“Who?”

“Bob's wife.
That
was awkward.”

“Why?”

Dave's brows darted up like question marks. “Haven't you heard? Bob cheats on her like crazy.”

Matthew tried to remember. Maybe Nicole
had
said something about Bob flirting with coworkers. And now they were off together on the other side of the country for a monthlong business trip.

Dave shook his head in disbelief. “The guy could double for the mayor of Munchkin City and he lays more pipe than anybody I know. Why did Erin marry him? She's actually kind of hot—plus, I've heard she's loaded. I'll never understand women.”

Matthew mumbled in agreement and started to edge away.

Dave sighed. “I gotta get some wipes before I leave the store so I can clean up Miss Cheez Doodle.” He tapped the toddler's head. “Otherwise Gina'll kill me. I'm doing the shopping to give her downtime—but all the goodwill points I earned coming here will evaporate if she has to mop up the kid when I get home.” He grinned bigger. “See you around.”

“Sure thing.”

Matthew stood in a daze next to the yogurt. Maybe he would call Nicole when he got home, just to see how she was doing.

Rousing himself again, he speed-shopped through the rest of the list, but he remained distracted. Off-list items slipped in, and his vow about preparing meals from scratch went out the window when he came to the frozen pizzas.

He tracked down Olivia at the magazines. She clutched the latest editions of
Horse and Rider, Seventeen,
and
People,
and evidently expected an argument. “If you don't want to pay for these you can take them out of my allowance.”

“It's okay. Toss them in.”

“Really?” Her expression was equal parts joy and suspicion. “Mom hates it when I buy magazines, especially horse ones.”

“She probably thinks it's a waste of money because you don't have a horse.”

“Yet.” Olivia grinned. “But when I do, I'll know absolutely everything.”

In the checkout line, he spaced out again.
Bob.
He had only a vague memory of the guy. Did he look like the mayor of Munchkin City? Bald—check. Mustache—check. But he wasn't
that
short.

“Becca!” Olivia shouted.

At the same time Matthew glanced up, the woman in front of them pivoted, her pensive expression breaking into a smile when she saw Olivia. “Hey there.”

“I'm getting
Horse and Rider,
” Olivia told Becca. “My favorite magazine.”

“I'm buying Frosted Flakes,” Becca answered. “My favorite worry food.”

For the first time, Olivia looked into their own cart and sighed in despair. “You got lemon yogurt. Ick.”

“Go grab something you like better,” Matthew said.

She darted off.

He turned back to Becca with a smile, intending to make chitchat, but her preoccupied expression took him in another direction. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Have you ever had a gut feeling about someone . . . ?”

Yes—you
.

She shrugged. “I worry I'm trusting someone
way
too much. But trust is supposed to be a good thing, right?”

“Not if it's a stranger.”

“But that's just it. This person
is
a stranger, and yet I don't feel the usual distance I sense from people before I get to know them.”

Her words made him wonder. He had felt a weird connection to this woman from the start. Was this Feel Odd Connections to Strangers Day? Or was it her? Maybe it was like the six degrees of separation theory—except the whole world intersected through the cake lady.

He tried to rein in his ridiculous thoughts. He'd never been an illogical person. “You've never met this person before?”

“Not before today.”

“It's a guy?” His stab of disappointment surprised him.
Why should it matter to me?