Chapter 8
8
Kieran
I’d only gotten a few hours of sleep, but if I hit snooze a second time, what little sleep Granddad would get in the morning would be interrupted, so I’d dragged myself out of bed. There was only one other unit in our building, and our neighbor, Mrs. Nguyen, had a hard time getting up and down the stairs, so I didn’t mind helping her out. I heard the low whine from the other side of the door and used my key to crack it and let her dog out into the hall. I checked my watch, and I was already a little late, but I did this every morning to save her one trip on the stairs. Penny wagged her tail, her whole body vibrating until I laid a hand on her head and scratched behind her ears. The dog was probably ten years old but still acted like a puppy, and I led her down the stairs to the small patch of grass behind the building, pulling on the back door to the shop as I walked by, just to make sure it was still locked.
The morning was still and frigid, and I breathed into my cupped hands as I waited for Penny to make seven laps of the space to find her perfect spot, her brown and black ears perking up when, on lap eight, all was revealed. “Good dog,” I said, seeing my breath puff in front of me. Traffic was beginning to buzz on the interstate nearby, but otherwise the street was quiet. In that space alone, I let my mind wander. I was the only one awake with the exception of Penny, and I imagined starting the day I wanted to have. I thought about going back inside my own place and not to the cramped quarters of my childhood bedroom in Granddad’s apartment, imagined looking ahead to a long shift at the hospital, and a date after with a woman, maybe a fellow doctor. I rubbed my hands together, waiting for Penny to finish her business. That life would not include a late night with a would-be thief who left me a lottery ticket after sex. My body reacted to the memory, even as I shuddered remembering the moment of realization. The sweet taste of her kiss had lingered on my lips, but the familiar, sinking disappointment at learning she’d been the one to walk off with the donuts that morning was more lasting. That was a red flag I wouldn’t ignore, but I didn’t have time to spare her any more thought.
I clapped twice, beckoning the dog back inside. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour, but the sky was hinting at shifting from night to the first brush of azure in the sky. The alley smelled like fried dough this morning. Another morning in my real life, and not that fictional version I’d imagined. I checked my phone as the dog started making her way toward me. I had three notifications from Lila the night before.
Lila: Three thousand dollars for a new mixer.
Lila: And that’s for a used one in not great shape. Anything decent is closer to five.
I couldn’t believe she’d been coherent enough to search. We were both exhausted after staying up until all hours cleaning and attempting to fix the mixer. I covered the yawn that fell from my mouth. The mixer was working, but just barely, and it made noises that let me know it would not hang on for much longer.
Lila: And we need to think about replacing the fryer.
I clapped again, and Penny came bounding toward me, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth, waiting expectantly at my feet for another scratch behind the ears with all the energy of a dog half her age. I was fairly certain I’d let her back into their apartment and she’d sleep all day. Still, I scratched her behind the ears, giving her a few extra pets before jogging up the stairs. Even in the cold February morning, the dog looked up at me like I had the answers to all her problems, and that was easier than thinking about Lila’s messages.
As soon as Mrs. Nguyen’s door closed and I turned the key to lock it, our door opened and Granddad stepped out, his cane in one hand.
“Don’t even try to stop me.” He held up a palm, his voice hushed. “I’ll be careful, but I’m going to work.”
I opened my mouth to speak. It had been only the day before when he’d fallen down the stairs.
“I need this, son,” he said more quietly, meeting my eyes. “I know you understand needing to work and be productive more than anyone.”
I did. Every day, all I wanted to do was get back to school. I held out my hand without another word. “Okay,” I said. “Slow, though. And hold on to my arm.”
“And I’m working the front,” he said, the humor I’d known my whole life coming back into his voice as the stairs creaked under our feet. “You and Lila got all the brains in the family, but let’s face it. I’m better looking and everyone knows sex sells.” He laughed as we reached the landing, and I unlocked the back door to the shop.
“I think I do all right,” I returned, enjoying the familiarity of this. Joking with Granddad used to be part of my day. Singing along to the music piping through the speakers in the shop was normal, and on some level, I’d missed that.
The shop was cold, and I didn’t catch the next thing Granddad said, already thinking about what the heat going out would mean for business, though Granddad continued. “All that schooling and they never taught you to keep the best-looking employee out front. I—” The rest of his observation froze in the air as we both stopped short. The heat wasn’t the issue; the front door was open, and the cold February air rushed in over the landscape of broken glass and upturned tables, and across the bulletin board, where someone had ripped down most of the notes from the third-grade class. I looked left and right trying to take it all in while cursing myself for sleeping too heavily the night before. The front case was bashed in, and the donuts I’d planned to walk to the shelter the night before were scattered on the floor under the mangled cash register, the drawer open and empty.
“What the hell happened?” Lila approached the front door, eyes wide, with her backpack slung over her shoulder. I wasn’t sure when my sister found time to sleep—she’d been in the shop later than me.
I kept looking around, trying to make a plan, but I had no plan, and I kept gulping in air.
“We were robbed,” Granddad said, leaning against the wall. “Call the police.” The sigh in his voice erased all the previous humor. “How much was in the register?”
“But I locked up,” I said uselessly, crossing the shop and inspecting the door. “Before the mixer went haywire, I locked up.”
“The mixer?” Granddad eyed me with a look between skepticism and confusion.
“Little issue last night,” I said, skirting his question. “But I swear I locked the door…” I studied it again, realization dawning. Sybil had run out the front door while I was distracted, and then I’d never checked it again. “Oh, God,” I said to myself, running my fingers through my hair. “Oh, God. This is my fault.”
Lila was already on the phone with the police, and I wandered back across the room. “I’m sorry, Granddad. This is my fault.”
He patted my arm. “You didn’t destroy the shop. Only ones to blame are those to blame,” he said, though his gaze swept over the mess as well. I imagined him totaling the hours he’d spent making that shop like a home in the community, and the way it was all but destroyed when he’d had to leave me in charge.
“They’re sending a car,” Lila said. “Whoever broke in didn’t seem to get into the office. Computer is still there, and nothing looked out of place. I even found this.” She held up a piece of paper and two twenties.
It took me a moment to piece together what she had in her hand, and I lunged for it, not wanting to explain the note on the back or that my one-night stand had been the one to take an order without paying the day before. “Set it down. We need to start sweeping up all this glass.”
She turned away, pulling the ticket from my grasp, and I followed her gaze between her phone and what she had resting on the desk near her elbow. I recognized the corner of the logo I saw at the top and the bleed-through of the blue ink.
“Why are you messing with your phone? The shop is destroyed.”
Lila dragged her eyes from her phone to me, her pupils wide. “Did Tom leave this here?”
I rolled my eyes and made a grab for the ticket. “Focus,” I said, motioning to the room. “A customer left it.” She blocked me again. “It doesn’t matter.”
“A customer?”
I made another grab for the ticket, my body tense with the memory of finding it. “A customer. Give it to me. It’s trash.”
Lila held the ticket to her chest, twisting away from me. Sybil’s curly handwriting was visible on the back. “Then why was it in the office?”
The last two days pushed against my back suddenly, the exhaustion and frustration and stress, but instead of crushing me, it just decimated my patience. “It doesn’t matter. Why are you on this? Who cares?”
“Kier, this matters.” She held out the ticket, looking at the front of it again before pulling it against her chest when I tried to grab it from her hand. “Stop it,” she said, her voice reminding me of when she was younger, of when I would tease her or Granddad would ask her about her boyfriends or girlfriends. But before I could tell her she was acting like a kid, or better yet walk away and let her draw her own conclusions, she held out a hand and clutched my arm. “Kieran, this is a winning ticket.”
Her words bounced back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball. “No, it’s not. Stop fucking with me,” I said, walking to the other side of the tiny office. “It was hers, okay? Are you happy? You got it out of me and solved the mystery.”
“The woman who was back here with you last night?” Lila hadn’t let go of the ticket, but she looked closer at the handwriting on the back and then stifled a giggle.
“I’m glad I could amuse you,” I said, pushing past her toward the corner where we kept the broom. “It’s good to laugh after the shop was ransacked.”
“Seriously. This is a winner,” she hissed, following me. She pitched her voice low so Granddad couldn’t hear. “Kieran, you won the lottery .”
“No one actually wins. The odds of you getting struck by lightning while fighting a bear are better.”
“People win,” she exclaimed, following me into the kitchen. “ You won, dummy. Or your guest won, and since you have her ticket…”
“You probably read the numbers wrong. Granddad does that all the time.”
“Granddad has cataracts and still calls the internet ‘America Online.’?” She waved the ticket in front of me. “I have twenty-twenty vision and a degree in accounting, and I double-checked the winning numbers from last night.” She handed me the ticket after studying my face and deciding I wasn’t going to tear it in two. “Oh my God. You won the lottery !”
I stared at the ticket between us, the blue ink of Sybil’s scribbled note in sharp contrast to the crumpled white of the paper. “No.”
Lila’s smile widened. “This could solve everything!” Her voice rose, eyes wide. “The medical bills, the shop, your school bill, Granddad’s living costs…” She looked over my shoulder as if tallying. “This would solve it all.”
“No, it won’t.” I handed the ticket back to her. I studied the loop on the h in “thanks,” the way the ink curved in a careless way. “Not for us. We can’t keep this.”