3. Lila
Chapter Three
LILA
I finish my last two tables early and tell Marvin I'm stepping out to walk Rosie back from school.
He doesn't ask why, today of all days, when she's walked those few streets with her friends since the first week of term. He looks at me over his glasses for a second, then waves a spatula. “Bring me back my best customer.”
As I walk outside, I'm still turning it over. Wrench told me to stay inside, and crossed that lot toward Shawn's car with his dog standing sentry at my door, and the whole diner watching. The car left and his bike growled up the street not long after, and he never came back in.
How much does he know? What did my face give away that made him act like that? And why, underneath all the fear, is there a warm glow for a man I barely know, because he put himself between me and danger without me even asking him to?
The afternoon is all blue sky and mountain air, the same pretty view that stopped my car here three months ago and made me think, well, maybe this is a good place.
I wave at Viv sweeping her steps and smile at the deputy's wife coming out of the pharmacy, while my eyes sweep every parked car on both sides of the street, cataloging colors and plates.
The whole time my heart bangs away and my chest is tight.
No car.
The bell at the school lets out its flood of children, and there's mine, dark braids flying, a drawing held over her head in triumph.
“Mama! We did the solar system… I got Saturn!”
“Saturn's the best one, baby.”
“I know. Miss Patel said my rings were very realistic. Poor Maria got Uranus, and Benji wouldn’t stop teasing her.
” She fits her hand into mine, sticky with marker, and starts telling me about the rest of her day, and I hold on to that little hand the whole walk back and try to pretend everything’s normal.
By the time the afternoon lull rolls around, she's at the counter with her coloring book, and I've talked my heartbeat down to normal. Almost. Every time the door chimes, it thuds in my chest. Near closing, it skips a beat for a low engine’s growl that my body knows before my brain does, and there he is.
Wrench parks his bike across the street in the exact spot where the mahogany car sat. Front toward the diner, claiming the spot back, and I stand there with a rag in my hand, unable to stop gawking at him.
He comes in with Waffles at his heel and takes his seat at the counter. No plate this time. Just coffee, and his eyes move over the room slowly, checking the door, the windows, the back exits, before they get to me.
“We're about to close,” I say, although what I want to ask is where he went and why he’s decided it’s his business.
“Yes.”
But he doesn't leave, and I don't want him to. It’s ridiculous, but that frantic fear I get in the back of my throat is quieter when he’s there.
I pour him more coffee. Marvin cashes out.
Taryn heads home with her arms full of pie tins, hollering goodnight.
My playlist runs down through the slow songs I put at the end of every shift.
The big man sits at the counter with his dog draped over his boots, the pair of them looking in no hurry to ever be anywhere else.
Rosie finishes Saturn. Then she slides off her stool, goes to the plate rack, and helps herself to one strip of bacon from the tray I haven't cleared, and I open my mouth to object, then snap it closed.
Wrench looks at the dog. The dog looks back with his ears up and a string of drool already reaching for the floor. One quiet word and the tail goes off against the linoleum, and my daughter feeds him with great care. I have to turn around and wipe the milkshake machine so nobody can see my face.
This is what I can't afford to want.
When I turn back, Wrench is looking at me. His gaze is steady and being caught in those dark eyes is like being suspended in time. I can’t look away.
“That car. You know it.” It’s not a question.
The room goes quiet except for Dolly singing Real Love from the speaker. Rosie's scratching Waffles' ears and chattering to him about the planets.
I shrug, trying to look casual. “Never seen it before.”
He doesn't blink or argue. But he knows I’m lying. My ears go hot with shame over a lie I need to tell to keep myself safe.
“Closing up,” I say, too brightly. “Come on, Rosie-roo.”
Wrench stands and then he waits. Holds the door open for us, and follows us out into the warm evening. He walks us across the lot to my sorry old car, the dog trotting ahead of us, a self-appointed honor guard.
Rosie buckles herself in, the door shuts, and for a second it's just him and me in the dusk. He's close. Warm leather scent, a full head of height on me, and my body aches to lean in closer.
I nod to him, trying to give the impression that I don’t need protecting.
Getting in, I turn the key, and my car makes that disappointed grinding sound.
It’s louder than yesterday. It catches on the second try, and I roll the window down to say goodnight, and he's got one hand resting flat on my roof, like he’s holding the whole car in place.
“Bring it to the shop tomorrow,” he says.
“That's kind of you, but I can't afford…”
“No charge.”
“I can’t let you–”
“It’s no problem, Lila.” There's a shine in his eye when he says my name, buried under all that black beard. Is he flirting with me? It pries at a feeling I have kept bolted down for years.
“Will Waffles be there?” Rosie shouts from the back seat.
“He's the one who does the estimates,” Wrench says gravely, and Rosie's giggle fills the car. I am in so much trouble.
He steps back, tapping the roof. “Lock your door tonight, dulzura.”
I drive home with my daughter singing happily, checking my mirrors at every stop sign.
Our house is a little yellow rental at the end of Strawberry Street.
It’s a little shabby, but the porch gets the evening sun and there’s an apple tree in the front yard.
My sewing machine takes up half of the kitchen table, where it lives, and on the dress form in the corner hangs a half-pinned sundress in cherry-print cotton.
It's the second of three pieces for Viv, who stopped me on the sidewalk six weeks ago in one of my Sunday dresses, demanded to know who made it.
She refused to believe the answer until she'd turned me around twice in front of the pharmacy.
Now there's a corner of her boutique waiting on me, and a little card she had printed that says the dresses are made in High Vale, by Lila.
First money I'll ever earn with my own name attached to it.
I've been sewing my own clothes since I was younger than Rosie.
It took a chic Frenchwoman to tell me it was worth something.
I herd Rosie through bath and supper and one chapter of her library book. It's only after she's asleep, when I go back outside to bring in the mail, that I see it.
An envelope with no stamp. No address.
Just my name across the front, in handwriting I would know at the bottom of a lake in the dark.
Lilabelle.
Nobody has called me that in years. I stand in the porch light, my hands shaking, and I open it, because not knowing is worse. One piece of paper inside.
Miss you, Lilabelle. You look good. So does she.
The paper goes into my pocket instead of the trash because some old animal part of me is already thinking about evidence. I hate that I know exactly what to do next, because I've done it before.
I go to the hall closet. Behind the winter coats, on the floor, sits the duffel bag I’ve never fully unpacked.
I look at it for a long time. Down the hall, Rosie giggles in her sleep.
In the kitchen, the cherry-print dress hangs half-pinned on the form, waiting for me to finish it.
That dress and this house carry my hopes and dreams for the future, a quieter life.
Then I pull the bag out, and I start to pack.