broken claims

Part 7

"Can I ask you for a favour?"

Merle looked up and offered her a tight lip smile as he twisted a screw back in place. "Ain't I already breaking my back to make sure this piece of shit toaster toasts for you?"

Leigh rolled her eyes and kicked her legs. Dixie from a few doors down stole her sister's nail polish and the blue was already starting to chip off of her fingernails. Her thumb idly scratched a bit where the paint was starting to peel off and she pried it up, almost neat. "You know Clark, right?"

The screwdriver went down onto the counter with a soft thunk. Earlier when Merle asked for one from the box, Leigh had chirped if he wanted a plus or a minus screw driver, sparking the man into a petulant rage about the proper names for tools. He had been surly ever since to the screwdrivers. "Think everybody knows a bit about that Clark."

Clark was the newest of her mother's love interests. They usually all look vaguely the same; scruffy with hungry eyes, glazed over sometimes when she spotted them before they spotted her, pockets that rattled with pills, arms riddled with tiny little marks that used to think were special only to her mother, a bit like her freckles. But Clark was different. He wore fancy shoes that had a bit of a point to them, kept his hair cropped tight to his skull. Whenever he smiled, it looked real. Less fake. Even her grandparents liked the man which was why he was a current feature of the Friday Night dinners for three weeks straight.

"Can you tell dad that you're gonna pick me up Tuesday after school?"

Winter had temporarily dried up the bulk of their work which meant Daryl and Merle were around more, tentatively pacing time between work orders and more inclined to notice when Leigh wasn't around.

"What does Tuesday have to do with Clark?"

She didn't often see Merle serious. Usually he's the fun one to stick close with and sometimes his anger could snap up from nowhere, unexpected heat billowing up until the temper soothed itself back over. But Merle's frustration with the junky toaster was suddenly gone. His blue eyes met her own and the set to his mouth refused to soften. "I'm not supposed to tell you," Leigh said, frowning. "He said it'd be a secret."

"Leigh, darlin'. What kind of secrets is that man asking you to keep?"

"Dad's birthday is next week. He said he'd take me and help me look for something to get him," Leigh said slowly, fiddling with the cuff of her sweater. "Said he'd come and get me from school and nobody would have to know anything."

Merle crossed the tiny postage stamp of a kitchen and dropped down in the chair beside her. The tattoos across his knuckles tightened from the shape of his fists. "That man just asked out of the blue if he could scoop you up from school with nobody knowing any wiser? Just from the plain goodness of his heart?"

Sharley rarely kept men around like they might be long term prospects. It usually set her dad's teeth on edge whenever he heard, complaining something about attachments and bad influences on a kid. But Leigh was the one who had to sit presentable every Friday night while Shaley occupied one end of the table and her grandparents took the other; both sides politely waging some kind of war she didn't understand. Clark was just the one person asking her about classes and soccer, things that didn't spark some kind of fight between the family. At first she had been shy around him, uncomfortable with the additional person of company, but Clark had gotten her to warm up after two hours of watching Sharley pace around the living room like a tiger in a cage.

"He's nice," Leigh said, shrugging. "I don't know."

He hesitated, one hand unfurling just long enough to pat her shoulder. "I just want you to think about what would happen if your daddy came on by the school anyways to come and get you. I'm gone Tuesday and Wednesday on a bit of a road trip with those fuckers from the shop and he knows damned well I ain't gonna swing by for a little after school pick up. Just imagine his face if he gets there and you're not there, the way his mind'll go to worse case scenarios."