The Second Chance (Inferno Falls Book Three) (3 page)

“Very funny. What were they, friends of yours?”
 

“Yes. We’re very close.”
 

“You’re paying for their order, Sweetheart.”

I spin. I was using one of the register pens to strike out the receipt, and nearly jab it into his neck by accident. Then I almost jab it into his neck on purpose.
 

“They ran out!”
 

“After you gave them two free meals.”
 

“They demanded those meals!”

“Roxanne says you just handed them over. Didn’t even try.”
 

“Oh,
Roxanne
says it? Well whoopity fucking doo, Ed! I guess we’d better do what
Roxanne
says!”
 

“Watch yourself, Maya. You’re on thin ice.”
 

My temper flares. Not only am I catching shit for doing nothing wrong; now I’ve committed unknown sins in the past without experiencing them in the present. “Why am I on thin ice?”
 

“Friday, for one. You left early.”
 

“I had to pick my daughter up at school! Jen said she’d cover for me!”
 

“I didn’t approve that.”
 

My temper slips another notch. Ed didn’t approve my leaving because Ed wasn’t there. He was supposed to be, but he left. Nobody knows where he went. He does that. We think he goes on walks, but it’s possible he’s stalking pretty women as they pass, buying flowers and following them until they duck around a corner and manage to shake him.
 

“There was nobody in here. The place was dead. It was fifteen damned minutes, and I clocked out, so you didn’t even pay me.”
 

“You’ve been asking for a lot of time off.”
 

“Asking! Not getting!”
 

“But every week now. Several times a week, in fact.”
 

I feel my cheeks flush. I’ve been told I have a redhead’s temper, but it’s strange because neither of my parents have red hair and both are totally chill. Boring, yes. Conservative, judgmental, maybe even a little racist? For sure. But not angry and not apt to go off like I do now. This is classic Maya: last of the kids in line, the baby, the one who got to know her parents like wardens rather than buddies. No wonder I acted out.
 

“I keep asking because you never give me the time! Just give me one goddamned day off, and I’ll stop asking, Ed!”
 

“Why do you want time off so badly?”
 

I almost snort at that one. Of course he wouldn’t understand. Ed, as far as I can tell, has no one. He seems to enjoy reading thrillers and playing computer games, so my best guess is that he goes home each night and does both until he passes out. Although I’m sure there’s some disturbing masturbation happening as well, possibly with some unspeakable fetish.
 

I try to calm myself. I try to forget the food he’s threatened to make me pay for.
 

“I feel like I never see my daughter. She’s in school and then goes right to the after-school program.”
 

Vague sadness threatens, and I feel my anger turning to something else. I could lash out at Ed, but it’s me who’s done something wrong. Mackenzie stays with other people all day every day, and by the time I come home, I’m too beat to do anything with her beyond watching TV. I feel like she’s growing up without me, raised by a committee that I’m not even on. Once upon a time we were friends — and champ that she is, Mackenzie keeps trying to be mine. Every time I break a promise, she forgives me. Every time I make a new promise, she believes it.
 

And, I think, with a load of guilt, whenever I do manage a bit of energy, I spend it on myself. On releasing my tension. On finding a man to hold me, knowing it’s wrong, knowing what people would think. Every time, I make excuses:
This is how I cope; this is how I was programmed; this is how I reacted when my parents tied me down, gave me the gift of shame, and sent me to Jesus.
But it’s all a lie. I’m twenty-seven now. I’m a grown woman and should be able to feel an itch … and walk away without scratching it.
 

My daughter deserves better. She deserves all I have to give because she’s always given me all she has.
 

She didn’t ask to be born. She didn’t ask to grow up without a father. She’s my precious little gem, and I refuse to let her down anymore — be it due to my own weakness or to a tyrant like my boss.

That’s why today, fuck it all, I’m going to rent her one of those little boats. We’re going to get ice cream. We’ll feed the ducks and talk heart to heart about all that matters to her, all that bothers her, all she feels, and all she fears. We’ll even go roller-skating afterward. Because today’s mommy-daughter date isn’t just about today. It’s about all the times I’ve had to bail for reasons she pretends to understand but doesn’t.
 

“This is the job,” Ed says. “You took the job, so you can either do it or find a new one.”
 

“I’m just asking for some flexibility. A weekend day off here and there. I’ll work longer shifts if they can be less frequent. I just need the freedom to leave fifteen minutes early when Mackenzie needs a ride, or when there’s … ” I sigh, putting on my most eminently reasonable tone. “When there’s
not even anyone here that needs serving
, Ed.”
 

Ed watches me for a few seconds with his beady little rodent eyes.
 

“Nobody here asked you to get knocked up.”

Before I can lash out, there’s a scream from the kitchen. I hold my tongue, furious but in abeyance, until I see what’s happened. When I arrive behind Ed’s bulk, we both see that Carla, one of the new girls, must have tried to slice a sandwich for one of her customers rather than letting a chef do it, and now she’s holding one hand in the other, drops of blood pattering food and floor.
 

The kitchen clock says I have ten minutes until I can leave this nightmare shift.
 

But Ed, his eyes still hard as if restarting our in-progress argument, looks right at me as Carla is helped out to someone’s car with a towel around her hands, presumably on the way to the emergency room.

“Okay, fine. You don’t have to pay for the dine-and-dashers’ food, but only because you’ll be covering the rest of Carla’s shift.”
 

CHAPTER 3

It’s late enough when I get home that not only did I fail to pick Mackenzie up directly from school like I’d double, triple, I’ll-get-it-right-this-time promised, I didn’t even get to tuck her in. By the time I’m off and out, she’s not even at my house. I have to go to my parents’ and pick her up. I tell myself that if she’s asleep, I’ll just ask Mom and Dad to keep her and try again in the morning. I’ll have to find some other way, if that happens, to make myself feel better. I have several ideas how to do that. None are good.

Dad is reading the paper when I arrive. He lowers it slightly, peering at me over the top of his glasses.
 

“Hey, Baby Girl.”

“Hey, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
 

“What, you don’t want to talk to me?”
 

“Okay. What’s up, Daddy?”
 

“Inflation,” he says then folds the paper with an air of
the-world’s-going-go-hell-and-what-you-gonna-do,
takes off his brown-frame glasses, and sets both aside. “I thought you were done with double shifts. You must really like it there.”
 

“As if. One of the girls cut herself, so I had to stay and take over for her.”
 

“Well, that was really good of you, Pumpkin. She gonna be okay?”
 

“I’m sure.” I look around. “Where
is
Mom?”
 

“I don’t know. Making more doilies to sell on the computer.”
 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
 

He shrugs. My dad doesn’t understand technology. Even the technology he should understand, and he’s not
super
old. I mean, it’s not like he was Methuselah when AOL came online. I always understood on an intellectual level that I was born late and that my siblings were nearly old enough that they could almost have been my parents, but to me, Mom and Dad were just Mom and Dad, not
old
Mom and Dad. In a way, the fact that they’d been around the block with the others before me was a real advantage because they’d already seen it all — and on the flip side, hadn’t seen anything like me. I’m sure my brother and sisters never sneaked out of the house at night, so they never saw it coming when I did. I was good at being quiet and never got caught, until I got caught in the most obvious way possible, when Mackenzie started stirring inside me.
 

“Thanks for picking Mackenzie up.”
 

“It was good timing. I’d just finished up the green Victorian.” He brightens and sits up. “You want to see it?”
 

“Maybe tomorrow.”
 

“Oh. It’s a lot like that first house. The one I made you?”
 

“I remember.” How could I forget? I pretended to be into dolls for years after I’d stopped caring about them just so Dad’s gift would get use. Then I set it up as a kind of shrine, furnished but not active. It’s still up there, in my old room, where Mackenzie is probably sleeping now.
 

“Lots of black kids at that after-school program,” Dad says, as if it’s something to ponder. Something to jaw about while you smoke around the old barrel with other white men.
 

“Daddy!”
 

“What? There are.”
 

On cue, my mother enters the room. She’s wearing a house dress, and her hair is somehow … well, not
up
, per se, but still definitely in a mess above her head that I would never think to attempt. I can see dried glue on her hands. I want to ask, but I’m a little afraid she’ll tell me today’s Etsy craft involves gluing googly eyes to clamshells. It’s happened before.
 

“What are you going on about now, Arthur?”
 

“I just said there’s a lot of black kids at Mackenzie’s after-school program.”
 

“Oh, yes,” says my mother.
 

“That’s … that’s nice, you guys.”
 

“Am I supposed to pretend there
aren’t
black kids there? I like black kids.”
 

“That’s even better. Maybe you could get a sign that says as much, and put it on the side of your van.”
 

“Maya, be nice,” Mom says.
 

“I don’t know why this is a problem. I just made a comment. It’s not like I said there’s anything wrong with it. Lots of black folks in Inferno Falls in general these days. Mexicans, too. Didn’t used to be this way when you kids were growing up. But I don’t have anything against them. They’re mostly just like us. I say hi to all of them when I find them.”
 

“Jesus, Dad.” He makes it sound like a vaguely racist scavenger hunt.
 

After I speak, they both look at me. I flinch and sense a reminder not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but after all this time the stare does plenty. The understanding filters between us, and I stay mute in penance, my eyes flicking down despite my impatience and the stress that’s still threatening to make me do things I know I’d better not do. I feel torn, and the tear makes me feel like confessing in the holy spirit that’s rippled through the room. Because I want them to tell me Mackenzie is still awake so I can take her home — but I want just as badly for them to say she’s gone for the night and I may as well go home alone. I feel horrible that half of me wants my daughter unavailable, but the pressure is hard, right now, to deny. And this despite my earlier convictions. I can’t help it. After all this time, it’s almost a hardwired response. I don’t know how else to deal, how else to make the darkness retreat when it knocks.

An unfair thought flicks through my mind as I stand on my parents’ carpet, feeling horny and horrible:
 

Damn you, Grady.

But it’s not his fault. It’s not even
close
to his fault, something soft within me screams. Even if everything would be different, now, if he’d never left. I’m broken. For a while, Grady loved me in spite of how I am, but now he’s not here.
 

“Is Mac awake?”
 

“I just put her down,” Mom says. “She heard your car pull in.”
 

“But you put her to bed anyway?”
 

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to take her back with you tonight or not.”
 

Shit
. I hate the way she put that. Now it’s a decision. I can leave her here in order to knock off the dust of a difficult day if I’d like, but doing so would make me a monster. She’ll be happy here, and I won’t let my bullshit touch her. Nobody will know just how selfish a choice that would be,
except me
. And as someone whose dignity and self-respect have taken a beating for the past nine years, I can’t afford to think bad of myself right now. I want to feel good. I need to feel wanted. But I can’t be the mother who leaves her daughter just so she can score her two-legged drug.