“We can’t be too bad. She keeps showing up, doesn’t she?” Ted again.
Callie used a napkin to clean up some drops of cream. “She’s lonely.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for her after what she’s done?” he responded.
“Let’s not get into that,” Eve said.
Noah jumped in next. “I agree. We’ve been trying to figure out whether or not Skip is abusive for a long time. The thought of it makes me want to break his smug-ass jaw. But unless she speaks up, there’s no way to know. And as far as Cheyenne goes, moaning about what we should’ve done isn’t going to help. We’re here, and she’s in Whiskey Creek. What can we do?”
“Nothing,” Eve said. “Not until we get home.”
“And then?” Baxter asked.
Callie leaned to the side so a waiter bussing tables could remove their empty cups. “We have to stage an intervention. It might make her mad at first, but…we have to do what we can to protect her.”
Eve liked this idea. At least it was proactive—if they weren’t too late. “Maybe we can get Dylan to see that he has nothing to offer her. If he really cares about Chey, that should be enough to make him leave her alone.”
Baxter cocked his head to one side. “Okay…and who’s going to risk life and limb by telling him to stay away from her?”
“I’ll do it,” Eve said before anyone else could speak.
“Good.” Ted’s cup, which he’d refused to relinquish to the young man cleaning the table, clinked on its saucer. “I don’t think he’ll hit a girl.”
Ted’s grin told them he was joking, but Eve didn’t find his remark funny. “Somebody’s got to do something.”
“Let’s just hope we help more than we hurt,” Baxter said.
“You don’t think it’s worth a try?” Eve suddenly sounded unsure.
“Actually, I do. No hell is worse than falling in love with the wrong person.”
If Callie hadn’t said anything about Baxter’s possible interest in Noah, Eve would’ve dismissed this comment without a second thought. Baxter could be so negative they sometimes affectionately called him Eeyore. But even while she was consumed with Cheyenne’s problems, the sour note of desperation and disillusion in his voice struck her as potentially revealing.
“What do you know about love?” Noah scoffed, barking out a laugh. “I’ve never even seen you date the same girl twice!”
It seemed to Eve that Baxter blanched at this comment. A poignant empathy thrummed in her chest, tempting her to reach out to him. But she knew he wouldn’t appreciate that gesture, so she kept her hands to herself while he mustered a tight smile.
“Maybe I’ve never met the right girl.”
Was that because she didn’t exist?
26
Cold and windy, Phoenix wasn’t the same city Presley remembered from years before. Anita had brought them here during the height of summer. When the temperature had been 116 degrees. Just sitting in a car with no air-conditioning, even after dark, made their bodies run with sweat. Presley would never forget how hard it had seemed just to breathe. She’d also never forget Anita leaving them alone shortly after they arrived, telling them she was going off to buy groceries. They’d begged to go along—she couldn’t be trusted to come back in the time promised—but were dropped off at the edge of a wide expanse of desert and told to wait in the shade of a dilapidated chicken coop. There, stomachs aching with hunger, they counted fire ants and watched a spider spin a web between two warped boards on the abandoned coop.
After a while, they scavenged for any type of fruit-bearing tree, hoping to get lucky enough to find a pomegranate tree, because Anita had said she’d found one on her first trip to Arizona. But the earth was so scorched it didn’t seem to produce anything more than scrub brush. They didn’t dare approach the house that sat off in the shimmering, hazy distance. They knew what Anita would do to them if they got her into trouble by involving other people.
When Anita finally returned more than seven hours later, she had no groceries. She did, however, reek of alcohol and threaten to knock their teeth down their throats if they didn’t stop nagging her for something to eat.
Chey was the one who made that day, and all the others like it, bearable. But Presley didn’t want to think about her sister. Life was life. There wasn’t anything she could do to change it.
The semi driver—Axle, which had to be a nickname but she hadn’t cared enough to ask—had provided her with a meal and money to catch a city bus to Sunnyslope, where they’d once lived with a gruff old man in a single-wide trailer. She could see the sun-bleached sign for Palo Verde Mobile Home Park in the distance. That was where she’d first tried meth, and it was the reason she’d come back here. She needed a supplier and this was the type of neighborhood where she’d be likely to find one.
If only her sudden nostalgia for Whiskey Creek wasn’t making her so damned heartsick. She stood on the corner of Nineteenth Avenue and Cactus Road, breathing in the exhaust of the bus as it pulled away and staring down the dystopian-looking street of strip clubs, sex shops and XXX video stores, all of which looked abandoned this time of day.
Her family had left this behind when they moved to California. At that point, their lives had changed dramatically for the better, and until this moment, Presley had forgotten just how much her situation had improved in the passing years.
“Hey!”
Startled by the intrusion into her thoughts, Presley blinked and focused on a tall, dark figure standing in the entry of a convenience store. “You a hooker, honey? You looking for a date?”
She could hardly see the man for the glare. But when she hesitated, he came out of the shadows. With short-cropped hair, a clean shave and a wedding ring on his left hand, he appeared surprisingly respectable for this side of town—except for the smarmy smile.
“I could show you a good time,” he offered.
Stepping back, she glanced up at the name of the store: Mel’s Quickie Grocery. It hadn’t been around when she lived here, but the businesses on this street frequently changed hands. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Just waiting for some girl to come by—like a…a spider hoping to catch a fly?”
He chuckled softly. “Not quite. My friend owns this place. He supplies me with…certain commodities I enjoy. I spotted you as I was coming out and thought you looked like the type who might enjoy them, too.”