Shelter Read online

  Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten yet today. She made a mental note that eating was no longer about her own growling stomach, but being healthy for the baby. Next stop: somewhere with food.

  As she pulled out of the school lot, she did a mental rundown of her failures so far that morning. They hadn’t been hiring office staff at The Journal, and she didn’t have the published writing chops yet to get herself a job as a writer. Neither of the insurance agents she’d popped in to see needed sales reps. Barnes & Noble was accepting applications, but had already done their holiday hiring and didn’t think they’d be giving her a call. After that, she’d decided to scale back her criteria. Which had led to more disappointment because neither Red Lobster, Olive Garden, nor Longhorn had been in need of hostesses.

  She drove without a lot of thought and ended up in a parking spot in front of the Silver Plate Café: a trendy little nook with wifi and hot coffee at the end of a shopping center that contained a Publix, a pet store, and several clothing and knick-knack boutiques. She hadn’t been into the place for months, but she thought she remembered them having really great bread.

  A waitress sat her in a window seat at a table for two and took away the extra set of silverware when she indicated that she was alone. Alma ordered a bowl of minestrone soup and half a Monte Cristo sandwich, Sprite instead of her usual Coke to avoid caffeine. She watched the shoppers move from store-to-store, most of them women since it was the middle of the day, some with small children or babies. Her mother had always told her that if she married well, she wouldn’t have to work for a living. Maintain her house and take care of her children without the nine to five grind. Even if Sam had still been alive, she would need to be working. She hadn’t married rich. She ate in reflective silence, pondering the tradeoff of love versus money. Could she have learned to love someone if he’d bought her an Escalade and draped her with diamonds? No, she didn’t think she could have.

  “Can I get you anything else?” the waitress asked as she set her tab on the table. She almost sounded sympathetic, like she was sorry Alma had been eating alone. Or maybe that was just her imagination.

  “Yeah, actually. Are you guys hiring?”

  **

  Diane was in the front yard when Alma pulled to a halt in the drive of her childhood home. The weak November sun was the color of champagne as it poured over the shrubs, mums and pansies. The lawn. Her mother wore her gardening hat and gloves and a button-up shirt and jeans that she had doubtless dubbed “old things” though they were spotless and unworn.

  “Hi, Mom,” Alma called as she closed the door of her truck and walked around the hood.

  Diane didn’t look up from the flower bed in front of which she kneeled. She had a garden trowel in one hand, a bulb of some kind that looked like a peeling onion in the other. “That damn thing is way too loud,” she said of the truck, like she’d said a hundred times before. The Silverado had been Sam’s idea – a nice big truck to keep her safe, and Alma had loved it – which meant that, of course, Diane hated it. “It needs a new muffler.”

  “Muffler’s fine, Mom. It’s supposed to sound like that.”

  She snorted and dropped the bulb in the hole she’d dug. The earth she pushed back over it was rich and black, it doubtless contained the perfect amount of nutrients thanks to constant composting and tilling. Her mother’s thumb was green, she’d give her that. The yard should have been on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens.

  Alma had expected a lecture of massive proportions, so the silence that stretched like the shadows that grew tall across the lawn made her uneasy. This was either the calm before the storm, or something worse: her mom had disowned her finally.

  “I got a job today,” she ventured when the quiet sounds of the trowel in the dirt became too much to bear.

  “Make sure you tell them you’re pregnant. Not everyone wants to see a girl with a belly spinning around on a pole.”

  All the optimism and hope she’d managed to scrape together about her new waitressing position fell out of the bottom of her stomach. She sucked in a quick breath and the backs of her eyes were stinging before she could gather her emotions. Her hormones were raging – horny and on the brink of a meltdown at all times – and she was trying to manage that, but her mother’s sudden coldness had hit her like a physical blow. She opened her mouth, and then snapped it shut again. She refused to have another outburst. That’s what Diane wanted: to prove she wasn’t stable and that she needed her mother to make her decisions for her. The crazier she looked, the harder her parents would push for her to move back in, go up to Tennessee with her aunt, and most of all, get away from Carlos.

  She cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, “thankfully that won’t be an issue. I’m going to be waitressing at the Silver Plate. I start tomorrow.”

  “Oh. Well good for you then.”

  This is not normal! She wanted to scream. Mothers and daughters didn’t act this way except in stuffy old English movies in which daughters actually called their mothers “mother” in a way that all about title and had nothing to do with love and affection. When she was younger, in her teens, she’d always imagined that pregnancy would bring the two of them closer. Instead, it had driven a wedge. Like Sam, she thought with a shudder. Emotional walls fifteen feet thick. She’d never known what he was thinking. Just like she played a guessing game with Diane.

  She fished her keys out of her pocket and spun around, not wanting to subject herself to anymore of whatever might be flung at her next. But she heard the trowel hit the ground.

  “How can you do this?” Diane demanded, voice shrill, and Alma glanced over her shoulder to see that her mother had her garden-gloved hands curled into fists at her side. Her expression was a mixture of anger and twisted-up sadness. “You’re happy going from a top-notch job to being a waitress? You’re just going to keep playing house with Carlos and pretend he’s Sam? That somehow, any of this is normal?”

  “Yes, Mom, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she said and began walking again.

  “He’s just a rebound, Alma!” Diane shouted as she retreated. “He can’t help you! He’s only going to wreck what’s left of your life!”

  **

  “My mom and Sam? Friggin’ long lost twins,” Alma told Carlos that night at dinner.

  He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, spaghetti noodles dangling off the tines. “What?”

  She pushed her own half-eaten dinner away. “Sam was so closed off emotionally, just like Mom.” It was the first time, she realized, that she’d said anything negative about Sam since his passing, and instead of making her feel guilty, she felt empowered. She’d been holding those grievances in for a long time and hadn’t even acknowledged them as negative traits. But they were. And it was a relief to be able to pull them out into the light for her and Carlos to see. “Heaven forbid we actually communicate and talk about what’s eating at us. Much better to stew over it, make snide comments and hold it all in until it turns into cancer and kills us!”

  Carlos looked like he wanted to smile, but wasn’t sure if he should. “See, this is bad. Because now I’m imagining Sam and your mom as twins in little matching overalls and shit.”

  Alma snorted a laugh. “Now there’s a disturbing thought.”

  “They always say women marry a man like their father, so maybe in this case, it’s just a little backward.”

  “Or sideways and upside down.” She sighed, got to her feet and took her plate to the garbage so she could scrape the rest of her pasta into the can. “It’s just, why can’t she be even the least bit happy for my small victories, you know?”

  He swallowed the bite he’d been chewing, took a thoughtful sip of his beer. Alma knew he was stalling on purpose. “I think she was banking on you being a published author. Being real successful and all that.”

  “I know.” And she did. She frowned as she went to the sink and ran water over her dish. She used to bank on the idea of becoming a novel
ist too. And somehow that dream had run aground.

  “When was the last time you wrote anything?” Carlos prompted.

  “A year maybe.” She shrugged. “I’d been doodling some notes in the day planner at work, thinking on a story idea before…” Sam died, “but it wasn’t any good, wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”

  “Aren’t you the one who told me that it didn’t matter what you were writing so long as you were writing something?”

  She turned around and leaned back against the counter, hands braced on the edge of the sink. Carlos had a gentle, probing expression he flashed her between bites. That same sweet face he’d given her when she was a teenager. It had been amazing at the time to think that she was getting such great life advice from her parents’ gardener. Apparently, he was still comfortable with the role of camp counselor. “Yeah,” she felt a non-smile tug at her lips. “A much younger, dumber version of me told you that once.”

  He smirked.

  “But I can’t keep writing short stories and random vignettes. If I actually wanted to write a novel, I’d have to sit down and hammer out a hundred thousand words that had a plot, round, well-developed characters…” she held up her hands. “And like I have the brain power to do that.”

  “You know,” he said, “I was in the grocery store the other day, looking for a new magazine, and you know how they have books in there too?”

  “Mmhm.”

  “Well there were all these romance-type books. The ones with the soft core porn on the covers - ”

  A laugh bubbled up out of her throat and she covered her mouth with a hand.

  “ – and I thought, ‘ you know, Alma could so do this’. You’ve got way more brain power than that,” he asserted, waving his fork at her before he tackled his spaghetti and meat sauce again.

  Oh, Carlos, she thought, still chuckling. He was downright magical sometimes. Always encouraging. “You think?”

  “I know.”

  A beat of comfortable silence passed and she watched him eat the meal she’d prepared. She’d made cooking a habit when she’d moved in with Sam. She’d not had much in the way of culinary skills and she’d been worried that grilled cheese and microwaved soup wouldn’t be good enough for her new husband. So she’d taken a cooking course at the Y and had poured through every Southern Living she could get her hands on. She wasn’t half bad now. And with Carlos, there were fewer of those deep silences in which she desperately tried to think of things to say that didn’t sound asinine. They just flowed, easy and calm. And as he popped the last bite of roll in his mouth, he actually brought his plate to the sink for her to rinse. And he dropped a kiss on her cheek while she did so.

  “Dinner was great.” And he meant it.

  “Hey, Carlos?” he’d been on his way to the bedroom – he had to bartend tonight and was off to change clothes. “I was thinking that I’ve got this great set of Rachael Ray cookware at my house.” He nodded, but clearly didn’t follow. “What if we have dinner over there tomorrow night?”

  His eyes widened. “Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

  She chewed on her lip. She’d wondered and worried what it would be like to have Carlos in the home she’d shared with Sam in this new capacity. As a lover and not just a relative. But she nodded. It was important she continue to take healthy steps forward. “Yeah. And I’ve got an adult-size bed,” she grinned and he returned it.

  “I’m cool with that so long as you are.”

  “Definitely. Definitely cool.”

  11

  For some reason, Alma expected to work as a trainee on her first day. That she’d be taken under the wing of a more seasoned waitress and learn the ropes slowly, have the process and policies of the company explained to her as the day went along, allowing her to become familiar with the menu and layout of the restaurant.

  Instead she watched a ten minute training video, was given an apron to wear over her black pants, and turned loose with a notepad and a series of tables she couldn’t keep straight despite the fact that the Café was tiny. Having a bachelor’s degree didn’t seem to make up for her lack of experience either. She felt like an idiot.

  “Oh, God! Oh, I’m so sorry. I…here, let me get you something…” but the woman wearing her sweet tea down the front of her white sweater didn’t look like any amount of napkins in the world was going to make up for Alma’s fifth spill of the day.

  One of the other waitresses, Emily, swooped in with a table rag and began clearing the mess with crisp efficiency. “Go get one of the cloth napkins behind the register,” she told Alma. Then to the patron: “I apologize, ma’am. I’m sending her after something you can clean up with and we’ll happily comp your meal this afternoon.”

  Giving away free food because of her clumsiness wasn’t the way to make money, or friends, in a new job. Alma felt her cheeks tingling with an embarrassed flush as she hurried up to the front register and dug around among the kids’ menus and Styrofoam cups for the ordered cloth napkin. All she found was a clean rag, but she snapped it up and hurried back to the table. Emily already had the table dry and a fresh tea in front of the woman. The other waitress took the rag from her with a sharp look, turning back to the customer the picture of soothing grace and charm.

  Alma massaged her temple, unable to soothe the pounding headache behind it. The more mistakes she made, the more anxious she became, the harder she tried, and therefore, made more mistakes. It was a vicious cycle and she couldn’t foresee an end to this day that left her still employed.

  “Miss?” a male voice intoned behind her. She turned to see the inhabitants of one of her other tables – a good-looking, well-dressed Latino guy with heavily gelled hair – extending his empty coffee cup toward her. “Would it be possible to get a refill?”

  “Oh shit,” she said before she could stop herself, then clapped a hand over her mouth. She’d walked past his table half a dozen times and hadn’t asked if he needed anything else. And now here she was cursing in front of him. “I mean, sure. Sure thing.”

  The backs of her eyes stung as she fetched the coffee carafe – she at least remembered that the man was drinking French roast – but she managed not to add insult to injury by crying. The woman in the tea-stained sweater was getting up from her table, talking loudly with her friends about “clumsy idiots” who “shouldn’t have jobs in restaurants.” She sighed as she pulled up to the man’s table and topped off his mug.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

  “Just the check if you would.” He caught her eye as she fished her pad out of her apron and tore off his stub. “Hey, it’s not the end of the world,” he said with a supportive smile. “Everyone has a first day sometime. And that old broad probably deserved it.”

  A smile, her first smile of the day, twitched her lips. “Not my finest moment,” she said. “But thanks.”

  “You’ll be fine…” his eyes skipped down to her name tag, “Alma.” He picked up his coffee. “Thanks for the refill.”

  She nodded as she moved off to her next table. She still might get fired at the end of her shift, but just those few encouraging words had helped straighten her head.

  A new group was being seated at one of her tables: three mothers and their elementary-age children who’d obviously popped in for a late lunch after school. Two little boys were shoving at one another, competing for the same chair, and the little girl was already squalling.

  Alma took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Good afternoon, welcome to the Silver Plate…”

  **

  It was Saturday, so Carlos was free until he clocked in at the bar at nine that night. Alma wanted to have dinner at her place, and the healthy signal from her had been so welcome he’d slept the night before with a smile on his face, but he had a while until dinner, which meant time in which to contemplate Sean’s proposition further.

  He replayed the night over in his head, each excruciating detail, even though it left his chest tight. The sounds of their
work boots echoing against the concrete floor, Sam’s shouted inquiry through the empty building. The noise from the floor above. The stairwell. And the shooter, his face hidden behind a cheap cotton ski mask. He’d been in oversized black clothes, tan arms and a little snake tattoo under his elbow the only traits he had to go by. And though he clung to them, Carlos couldn’t find anything remotely familiar about the shooter. His hands, hands that had held the gun, had been encased in black leather gloves.

  And then the memories became blood-soaked and gut-wrenching.

  Carlos took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky rush as he stared up at the building in front of him. It was the building. A bank once, a hardware store, department store that had closed down sometime a good two years before and had stood empty since, plywood over the windows, in a shabby, gone-to-shit part of the city. It was where Sam had died, and everything had changed. And it was the only lead he had when it came to…revenge. Just thinking the word still gave him a stomach ache. But yet here he stood, hands in his pockets, breath misting in the forty-five degree afternoon air.

  “Here goes,” he muttered to himself. He checked the sidewalk to make sure he was alone – or at least mostly alone – there was a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart a few blocks down. Then he walked across the front of the brick and stucco structure to the alley where he knew a side door could be jimmied open through a hole in the wall.

  The hole was still there, full of cobwebs, and he reached through the silk and grime until he could feel the pins of the lock where they latched into the female component. A few grimaces, a possible spider bite or two, and he had the door loose. He slipped in quickly, let it click in place behind him, and once the immediacy of finding cover was gone, dread filled him head to toe.

  The place smelled like he remembered: like mildew, mold, and dust. Gaps in the plywood shutters were the only sources of light, and beams sliced through the shadowed cavern of concrete and gutted beams like razors, dust motes dancing between them. Which gave him pause. Why would there be dust floating around unless someone had been in here to disturb it? Just a hobo he reasoned, though his hand went to the small of his back and his clammy palm wrapped around the grip of the Glock 9mm he had secured in the waistband of his jeans. He’d had the gun the night Sam was shot. This time, he was ready to use it.