A phone call that would set something in motion that the town of Blackwater had no way of preparing for. The envelope Boon had given to her contained $400 in cash. Naomi had counted it three times standing in her kitchen like the number might change if she looked at it long enough. It didn't. $400 more money than she'd held in her hands at one time in over a year.
Enough for Rosie's inhaler. Enough for groceries. Enough to keep the lights on for another month if she was careful. And she was always careful. She'd put it in the coffee can above the refrigerator where she kept her emergency fund, a fund that until this moment had contained exactly $11 and some change.
and she'd stood there with her hand on the can and let herself feel for just a few seconds something that was almost like breathing room. Then her phone rang. It was Linda Marsh from Two Roads Over. Linda was the kind of woman who knew everything about everyone in Blackwater and had strong opinions about all of it. Delivered with a cheerful efficiency of someone who had decided long ago that other people's business was her primary occupation.
Naomi. Her voice was bright in the particular way of someone who has news they can barely contain. I heard you had some visitors last night. Naomi set the coffee can back on the shelf. Roads were blocked.
They needed somewhere to wait out the storm. Hells Angels, though. A pause that was doing a lot of work. You know who they are, right? What they do.
They were veterans on a charity ride, Naomi said. They fixed my roof. Honey. Linda's voice shifted into something softer and more dangerous. The tone of someone who has decided your problem is actually her concern.
I'm just saying people talk and in a town this size, people have been talking since about 6:00 this morning. Naomi said goodbye and hung up. She stood very still in the kitchen. Then she picked up her keys and drove Rosie to the pharmacy to get her inhaler refilled before anything else could happen. She would later understand that the damage was already done before she'd even gotten in the car.
The pharmacy was a 12-minute drive into town. She made it in 9. Rosie sat in the passenger seat with her backpack on her lap, humming something that might have been a song she'd invented, occasionally touching the fogged up window with one finger and drawing shapes. The pharmacist, a quiet man named Gerald, who'd been filling Rosie's prescriptions for 2 years, wouldn't quite meet Naomi's eyes when he handed over the inhaler. She noticed.
She didn't say anything. She took the inhaler and paid and thanked him and walked out. In the parking lot, she passed two women from the school district she knew by face, if not by name. They were looking at her. When she met their eyes, they looked away.
Both of them at the same time. The way people do when they have been talking about you and haven't finished. Mom, Rosie said, slipping her hand into Naomi's. Those ladies were rude. They're just busy, Naomi said.
They were staring. Don't worry about it. Rosie was quiet for a moment. Then, is it because of the motorcycle men? Naomi stopped walking.
She looked down at her daughter, 6 years old, asthma lunged, sharper than anyone gave her credit for, and felt something move through her chest that she couldn't name. " No," she said. " It's not about anything." Rosie looked up at her with the calm, unblinking certainty of a child who knows when she's being protected from the truth. " Okay, mom," she said.
She kept holding her hand all the way to the car. Naomi was back at work by Thursday afternoon. The storm had passed. The diner had reopened and she needed the hours she always needed the hours. Patty's Place was warm and smelled like coffee and bacon grease and the particular brand of small town familiarity that Naomi had once found comforting and now found slightly suffocating.
She tied on her apron clocked in and started her section. The first table she approached went quiet when she walked up. four women regulars, the kind who came in every Thursday for the soup special, and talked loudly enough that Naomi had over two years of serving them learn more about their families than she'd ever wanted to know. They looked up at her with the same expression she'd seen in the pharmacy parking lot, that particular combination of curiosity and judgment that people wear when they've decided something about you. Morning, ladies.
Naomi said the usual. Naomi, the one who spoke was Donna Crane, whose husband was on the town council. Her voice was carefully neutral in the way that isn't neutral at all. Is it true you had gang members at your house? Naomi kept her face completely still.
Two years of waitressing had given her a face that could absorb almost anything without showing it. I had stranded veterans shelter from a blizzard, she said. Yes, Hells Angels aren't veterans. They're a criminal organization. Several of them are both, Naomi said evenly.
The soup today is beef barley. Can I get you started with that? Donna Crane looked at her for a long moment. I don't think it was wild, she said finally, exposing your children to that kind of element. Naomi wrote down the orders and walked away.
She made it to the kitchen before her hands started shaking. She stood at the pass through and pressed both palms flat against the stainless steel counter and breathed through her nose until the shaking stopped. It took longer than she would have liked. " You okay?" said the cook, a teenager named Marcus, who was the only person in the building who seemed unaware that anything was wrong. "
Fine," Naomi said. " Table four wants the soup special, all four of them." " Got it," she went back out on the floor. She got through the rest of her shift by becoming very small inside herself, retreating to that internal place she'd learned to find when things got bad, a place that was quiet and narrow and required very little feeling. She smiled when she needed to smile.
She refilled coffee when coffee needed refilling. She said, "You're welcome and have a great day and let me know if you need anything on a loop that required nothing from her." At 4:30, Patty called her into the back office. Patty was a 60-year-old woman with red hair that came from a box and reading glasses that lived on top of her head and a directness that Naomi had always respected, even when it cut against her. " Sit down," Patty said.
Naomi sat. Patty didn't sit. She stood behind her desk with her arms crossed and her expression doing something complicated. Something that looked like guilt trying to hide behind practicality. I've had four calls today, Patty said.
From customers about the situation. The situation, Naomi repeated. The bikers, the Patty waved a hand. All of it. I help stranded people survive a blizzard.
Naomi said, "That's a situation. I know that's how you see it. That's how it was." Patty pressed her lips together. " Naomi, I've got a business to run and I've got customers telling me they're not comfortable." "
Not comfortable," Naomi said. " Coming in knowing that my staff is—" "Is what?" Naomi said. And something in her voice had shifted. Something quiet had come into it.
something that was the opposite of retreat. Is what? Patty, what exactly am I that makes your customers uncomfortable? Patty was quiet for a moment. I need to let you go, she said.
Effective end of today. The words fell into the room and sat there. Naomi looked at the woman who'd employed her for 2 years, who'd given her Thanksgiving leftovers twice, who'd let her adjust her schedule twice when Rosie was in the hospital, and she waited for something to make sense. Nothing did. I'll have your check ready Friday, Patty said.
Naomi stood up. She untied her apron. She folded it carefully because she was not going to give this woman the satisfaction of seeing her throw it and she set it on the desk and she walked out without another word. She sat in her car in the parking lot for 11 minutes. Then she drove home.
The letter from her landlord was in the mailbox. Ray Gunderson had owned the farmhouse for 30 years and managed it with the benign neglect of someone who collected rent checks and preferred not to think too hard about the properties generating them. He was not as landlords went the worst. He fixed things when she asked mostly. He hadn't raised the rent in 2 years.