Hero Stalker

Part Eight

By the time I got back into our townhouse on Garden Street, it was past six o'clock and Mom was giving me the evil eye. Thankfully, Patricia had parked up the street, so Mom didn't notice she'd driven me home. I sat down at the battered wooden dinner table and tried to relax. Evening sunshine filtered through the old yellow drapes. The kitchen might not have been wide enough for two people to cook at a time, but I couldn't imagine anything bad happening here.

"Where's Vicky at?" I asked as I sat down. My little sister rarely missed dinner.

"Victoria's out with her cheerleading friends." Mom frowned. Cheerleading did not make her list of approved sports. "How did your day go?"

"Fine," I muttered, and twisted up my spaghetti. Looked like it was just me, her, and my little brother, Will. Ever since James had moved out, dinner had involved fifteen minutes of work, and two cans plus a box. "And you?"

"We got the booth permits signed for Harbor Day." She still wore work clothes—her dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail, her pearl earrings in, her Bluetooth blinking above them. "You'll be working a shift. Not sure which yet. I'm sure Valerie won't mind. After all, it's important. Have you seen Goldie Newman anywhere lately? I know she likes to sit in the Cable Street bus shelter. I had her scheduled for a housing subsidy appointment, but she didn't show up."

Mom worked for WSOC—Women Serving Our Community. It was a non-profit she'd founded with her old Women's Studies professor back in the eighties. She was the Chairwoman for Community Outreach and Events. "It's more than a job," she'd tell me. "It's a lifestyle." My earliest memories were of a road trip to D.C., on a bus with thirty other WSOC members and an infant Will, and marching for intervention in Rwanda. The summer before my sophomore year in high school had been an Obama-stumping-odyssey. Patricia had voted for McCain. She and Mom had been on shaky ground ever since.

"I haven't seen her in days." In the bright orange plus-sized pants she wore each day, Goldie Newman was hard to miss. I used to hand her a few bucks whenever I saw her, back before Mom started making me buy my own clothes.

"Keep an eye open." Mom's fingers brushed the gold cross on her necklace. "You know how vulnerable these people can be." An uneasy quiet fell over the table. I figured she was thinking back on the Bayton she'd grown up in. The riots in the seventies, the drug running in the eighties, the gang wars back when I'd been a kid. How long had she had those deep lines on her forehead?I shifted in my seat. If she got word of Harpy . . .

Not surprisingly, Will took advantage of the pause in conversation to change the subject.

 "Kent Denver's retiring next month," he said through a mouth full of green beans, "so he's going to train me to do the tax paperwork. And when I get my CPA certification in the fall, Lex says he'll put me in charge of the books and promote me to a full salaried employee. Forty thousand a year. I'll probably move out by Christmas."

"Keep your mouth closed when you chew or I'll be glad to see the back of you," Mom said. Her face relaxed. I wondered how long it'd be before Valerie gave me a raise.

Animal Planet was broadcasting a documentary about whale conservation, which Mom made us watch because her friend Myrtha had been interviewed for it. I hadn't expected the graphic shots of dead whales.

"Stop squirming, Gloria," Will said at one point. "It's natural. The circle of life."

"What do you know about nature?" Bayton had a nice, orderly food chain: cats and foxes ate the rats, cars hit the cats and foxes.

"I went fishing with Dad last year. You were there."

"Listening to you complain about the cell phone reception." Someone knocked on the door. "Excuse me."