The Till #2
I shake my head, and he unbuckles her the rest of the way and lifts her out. Once free, she starts toddling around the cavernous space.
“I just don’t understand,” I say. “This whole town is picketing as if the place was stolen from them. But you and Bob were willing parties in this transaction.” I gesture my hand toward the windows, toward the whole town.
“They all think I’m the enemy. If they’re so pissed about the sale, why aren’t they mad at you ? ”
“I don’t know,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
“You don’t know, or you’re not telling me everything?”
He looks away, and goddamn it, I want to shake him. To force some real answers here. But when I look at him, he’s watching his daughter, and something in his face gives me pause. The sadness. Almost like he’s lost.
It’s hard to break someone who’s already shattered.
My eyes drift to Lottie, watching as she bends to pick at a spot in the concrete. She wobbles, then plants her butt on the ground and starts smacking it. I have to admit the kid is cute, in an almost non-scary way.
“Look, I know it’s none of my business why you sold, and under normal circumstance, I’d just do my job with no concern for you or the details of the sale.
But the thing is, nothing has been normal about this job since I got here.
I’ve been blackballed by everyone here, as if I’ve done something wrong.
This leads me to believe that no one knows the details of the sale, and they are unfairly targeting me and my employer when they really need to be pointing their fingers at you.
So tell me, Ashton Elliot, why did you sell The Till, and why does everyone in town believe we’re the villains and not you? ”
He looks down, and I feel a pang of sympathy at the flash of discomfort that crosses his face. But then I harden my heart, followed by my expression once he looks up again.
“It’s complicated,” he says, repeating what’s proving to be a popular answer. Then he lets out a sigh before meeting my eyes.
I shake my head. “Nuh uh, I need more than that.”
Ashton looks at Lottie, who’s happily babbling in her own little world.
“We were about to lose the farm,” he finally says.
“The investment was a rocky one from the start, and it was never a money maker. But Bob and Bec loved the place. They bought the building not long after Sasha and I moved in, and Sasha was placed in charge of the store.”
He looks out the window, and I follow his gaze. Bernie was out there in front of the hotel, leaning down to hand a cookie to a little girl with her mother. The smile on her face almost makes her look young. So different from the woman who threw me out of her hotel.
“The Till held its own for a little bit. We sold seeds we got from a catalogue, and opened up the front of the store as a co-op for small businesses. It was charming and sweet, and Sasha loved the place. But soon, the money started bleeding out. We kept pulling from the farm to keep it alive. At one point, the electricity was turned off when the checking account went negative and a check bounced. And then Sasha…” He pauses again.
I don’t say anything, just wait for him to finish.
“Well, she left and we were left holding the bag. There was no choice but to sell, and Alexander popped up out of nowhere with an offer we couldn’t refuse.
The money was enough to pay off our debts.
It let us walk away clean—and fast. We had to take the offer. ”
“And you didn’t tell anyone about the reasons why,” I muse. He shakes his head. “Ashton, this town failed you. You all wouldn’t have gone under if they’d bought enough to keep you afloat. They are acting like victims when really they’re the ones to blame.”
“It wasn’t them.” He glances at me, then at Lottie. “It’s a long story.”
“I have nothing but time.”
He closes his eyes, and I’m suddenly aware that I’m prying into things that are none of my business.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”
“Sasha cleaned us out,” he says, his voice low, even though we’re the only ones in the shop.
“You mean she stole from you? From her parents?”
“From all of us,” he says, meeting my eyes.
“She took off in Bec’s car, but not before emptying the business account.
Most of it was Bec and Bob’s retirement fund, which they’d invested in The Till, and all of it was gone.
We haven’t seen her since. Without that money, we had no choice but to sell The Till.
The offer from Winslow & Associates came in at the perfect time, and it was enough to pay back everything Sasha took and more. Basically, we had no other choice.”
I look down at Lottie, feeling my breath grow sharp and hot as I watch Ashton’s daughter—Sasha’s daughter—play happily at our feet.
Why do I feel enraged by this information?
It’s not like I have any vested interest in The Till.
But I can’t help feeling protective over Ashton.
Over the Felixes. Over this tiny innocent child with a mom who just up and left her without a second glance.
“And no one in this town knows a thing.” I shake my head. “Man, you all must be saints or something, because I’d be blasting my ex’s name all over town if he’d pulled a stunt like that.”
“It’s not that simple,” he says.
“Really? Because from where I stand, it’s very simple. She embezzled from the family business and then abandoned you all to pick up the pieces. She sounds lovely.”
Ashton crouches down, then sits next to Lottie who immediately climbs into his lap. I join them on the floor, then sigh.
“I’m sorry. I mean, I’m not sorry about judging your ex, but I’m sorry for prying. None of this concerns me. How you all handled it is not for me to say.”
“You’re right, it’s not,” he says. As much as that pisses me off, I have no argument against it. “And you’re also right that we’ve let her get away with all this by keeping it under wraps. But we’re talking about Bec and Bob’s daughter here. We’re talking about Lottie’s mom.”
“We’re talking about a woman who didn’t think twice about stealing your livelihood.” Then I shake my head. “There I go again. Sorry.”
“It’s more than that,” he says, waving a hand as if to excuse my intrusion.
“We’d been fighting nonstop, and she wanted nothing to do with Lottie.
She couldn’t even pick up at the house. I was working my ass off, and I’d come home to Lottie in the same clothes she’d slept in, her diaper leaking, and the house a complete wreck while Sasha rotted on the couch.
The worst part? Lottie didn’t even cry anymore.
Six months old, and she didn’t cry. It was like she gave up.
” He looks down at his daughter, twisting a piece of her hair while she leans against his chest. “To top it off, Sasha started smoking pot again. It wasn’t anything new.
We both met at a cannabis farm we worked at in Oregon, and both of us had been heavy smokers.
But when she got pregnant, I’d stopped smoking alongside her in solidarity.
I thought we’d quit altogether, but then she started up again after Lottie was born.
While I was working, and while she was in charge of our daughter.
And it pissed me off. I was giving up everything for our family, and she was just getting high and letting Lottie sit in her shit. ”
“Ashton, you don’t need to tell me anything else,” I say.
“No, I do. I’ve held this inside for way too long, and I’m fucking tired of keeping all of this in.
” He looks at me. “I blamed it on the drugs. I wasn’t sure what else she was on.
Honestly, I still don’t. All I knew was that I couldn’t take it anymore.
I was fucking tired, and I worried about our daughter.
I mean, Sasha wouldn’t even let me involve her parents, so I was completely on my own.
” He lets out a breath. “I finally came to my senses and went to Bec and Bob with all of this. I was in way over my head. This wasn’t the Sasha I knew, and I couldn’t do this anymore. ”
“What did they do?”
“They took her in,” he says. “Packed a bag of clothes and had her come to their house. It was just across the way, but she wouldn’t see us anymore. Not even Lottie. Bec put a name to it, and I felt like the biggest asshole because all the signs were there.”
“Postpartum depression,” I whisper, feeling the words ice over my like a ghost. He looks at me quickly, and I avert my eyes.
“See, even you know what it was. I had no fucking clue.”
Of course I know what it was—I know intimately what it was. But I can’t tell him that.
“Maybe you’re right,” he continues. “I shouldn’t be dumping on you. You hardly know me.”
“Maybe that’s what makes it easier to let it all out,” I offer, shaking myself from my thoughts.
He ponders this for a moment. “Maybe,” he says. “It’s just that everyone in this town knows everything about everyone else, and as you’ve noticed, loyalty runs deep. They don’t know why Sasha left, but they’d take her side over mine in a heartbeat, even with everything that happened.”
“I don’t know about that.”
He laughs, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Sasha went to the same school everyone else did. She was on the same soccer team. She hung out with the same friends and knew everyone’s parents.
This town watched her grow up, and they grew up alongside her.
But me? I’ve been here a whole two and a half years.
They know me as Sasha’s boyfriend, or as Lottie’s dad.
But as Ashton?” He laughs again, this time looking up at the ceiling, at the ornate architecture that serves as our sky.
“I don’t have a real friend in this town.
Not one person. If it came down to a choice between me and Sasha, no matter what she did, she’d win. ”
“But her parents—”
“You didn’t see it.” He takes a deep breath, looking down as if remembering his daughter in his lap.
“When we showed up in Lahoma, everyone was so delighted to see her again. They looked past her half-starved body and dull skin from months of living in my car. All they saw was her pregnant belly and the fact that their prodigal daughter had returned.”
Lottie squirms, and he releases his hold on her, letting her wobble to standing before taking off to run circles in the center of the room.
“I saw the side glances that came my way next,” he continues, his eyes never leaving his daughter.
“No one said it, but I know what they were thinking. It was my fault she’d left.
My fault she looked the way she did. And now she was back, unmarried and pregnant, and I was to blame.
If this town found out what she did, it’s not her they would hold liable. It would be me.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “She stole from her family, enough to make it hurt. It’s her fault you all had to scramble and sell the store.
Of anyone, they should picket against her instead of blocking me out of this store or blaming my employer for snatching it up.
I mean, did any of you even search for her?
Send the police after her? Do anything to make her pay for how she royally fucked all of you? ”
Ashton closes his eyes, and I know the answer.
“God, Ashton. Even if Sasha was suffering, it doesn’t excuse the fact that she stole that much money.”
“People do crazy things when they’re depressed.”
I say nothing. Because, more than he knows, I understand. Yet, even knowing that kind of pain, I want to disagree. When it happened to me, I didn’t steal from my family or abandon everyone I knew.
But the past has its own way of rotting through a person, and who am I to pretend otherwise?
“I suppose,” I finally say, my tone unconvinced as I leave the rest to fester like an old wound.