A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [69]
“Jada Fossum, nice to meet you,” she said with a sure, hard grip. “Hey, Gordon,” she called as he came downstairs. “Next time you go out I’ll bring Leonardo over. He can guard the house for you.” She flopped onto the couch. “He’s a wicked good watchdog.”
“He is?” Delores said, and like Gordon remained standing, looking down at the sprawled girl.
“Christ, all he does is bark.” She laughed. When neither one replied, she sat forward. “Oh, you’re probably on a date, right?” She gave a lewd, crooked grin. “And you’re waiting for me to go, right?” She jumped up.
“Thank you, Jada. And thank you, too, Delores. It was good getting out,” he said, leading them to the door.
Delores found herself on the sidewalk with Jada Fossum while room by room the lights went out inside Gordon’s little house. A dog was barking from somewhere across the street.
“I like him. He’s so nice,” Jada said, batting mosquitoes away from her fuzzy curls that shone under the streetlight.
“Yes, he is, isn’t he.”
“Everybody’s scared of him, but I’m not.”
“Why are they scared?”
“He killed somebody once. A girl and a baby. You didn’t know that?”
“I guess I just forget sometimes.”
“Jesus, how can you forget that? My mother’s wicked scared of him. I’m not even supposed to be over here.”
“Gordon would never hurt you.” She opened her car door. “But you better get home. You don’t want to get in trouble with your mother.”
“I’m always in trouble with her!” the girl said, laughing. As she crossed the street, the barking grew frantic.
CHAPTER 11
June had already told Thurman that the aisles didn’t need sweeping, but he ignored her. Headphones on, he swept his indolent way through the store. His grandmother might have made him come back to work, but she couldn’t make him like it. When Gordon thanked him for preventing a break-in Saturday night, his sour shrug made clear that he hadn’t done it to help Gordon. He had yet to do one thing June or Serena had asked. Gordon tried to avoid him as best he could. The boy was a powder keg, aching to be set off.
The store was empty. It had been raining since early morning, and only a few desperate customers had braved the downpour. He didn’t like days like this—too slow, too much time to think. The plate glass rattled with the sudden boom of thunder. He pressed in another floor tile. Seeing Dennis with Jilly the other night had thrown everything off-kilter. It was vital that the few people in his life stay the same, to be who he needed them to be. He felt betrayed. And foolish. He thought he had been moving ahead but now saw how stuck he was. He wouldn’t even answer the phone anymore. If it was Dennis, he didn’t know what to say, and if it was Delores, she would want to talk about it and he couldn’t.
He had replaced almost all of the cracked tiles by the front doors. Working had always been the best therapy. He sat back on his heels. A few more to go. Little by little, one step at a time, that’s all it took to make things look better. These black and gray tiles matched the rest of the floor. Last week, he had found them down in the cellar in a soot-covered box. When he showed Neil, he was told not to bother, the new owner would probably gut the place and start over. But then after Neil’s letdown this morning, Gordon had taken to his knees, scraping and gluing. Maybe the next potential buyer wouldn’t be so quick to write the place off. His lower back ached, and the cuts in his hands stung from the acrid glue. He felt a little light-headed, and his stomach was growling. He hadn’t even stopped for lunch. His enthusiasm for these projects seemed to irritate Neil. It was the same reaction Dennis had whenever Gordon mentioned repairs around the house, the brass hooks he had screwed over the sink for dish towels instead of hanging them on the oven door the way his mother used to, the stops he had glued in their old maple bureau to make the drawers line up evenly, the shims he had painstakingly shaved from the handle of an old paint stirrer and then wedged under