Officer Daniels eyed me across his desk. “How are you settling in? Got your transportation worked out?”
“Everything’s fine,” I told him. “Between buses and Lyft, I get by.”
“Your reports from the nursing homes look good. You’re powering through those community service hours. Over a hundred down already.”
“Thanks.” I shifted on the hard plastic chair across from him. “What do you think about me doing Rocktoberfest? I know it’s out of state, but that pay’s going to be a big chunk of this year’s income. I swear I’m not any kind of flight risk.”
Officer Daniels tapped his fingers on the desk. I had a feeling he liked the idea he had power over someone he thought of as a rich rock star. He’d said those words a couple of times in our weekly meetings. I’d failed to convince him that I hadn’t made that much money in the first place, and had given most of it away now. “We’ll give it another month,” he said. “Stick to the terms of your parole, keep your nose clean, and I’ll approve the travel.”
I gritted my teeth because I wanted to give the event organizers a decent heads-up if I wasn’t going to make it, butsaid, “Yes, sir. I can do that.”Do not antagonize the man who holds your life in his hands for two years.
“Right.” Officer Daniels stood and reached over for the obligatory handshake. “Same time next week.” I gave him some credit for not trying to crush my hand with his grip, despite arms the size of Easter hams. In my travels through the justice system, I’d met other men who didn’t hold back.
I’d taken the whole morning off for this meeting, because a couple of times Daniels had been running late. Now I was looking at four hours till my afternoon commitment, and nothing I needed to do.
Four hours would be enough to take a look in that storage unit.
I shoved the idea aside. I’d been headed for the storage that I’d had movers fill with Mom’s stuff after she died when I’d dropped my fucking phone while going sixty. Since then, the thought of making that trip turned me queasy. Well, in honesty, I’d been dreading it before the accident. I’d spent four years paying the rental fee from a distance and pretending I’d get to it “when I had time,” while making sure I never hadenoughtime. Now I was stuck here in town, and I had no more excuses.
Except maybe,Four hours isn’t much time, when you include lunch and travel.
There, a perfectly solid reason to put the task off another day.
I could head to Wellhaven instead, knock off another service hour or two. The farther I got through my obligations, the more likely Daniels was to agree to Rocktoberfest. Right? Catching a glimpse of Lee was just icing on that cake.
The bus ride to Wellhaven used up half an hour, but that gave me ninety minutes I could still credit. I checked in with Kashira and headed for Mr. Harrington’s room to help him with his crossword. In the hall near his room, I almost ran into Lee coming out of Carol’s door.
Lee grabbed my shoulder to steady us. “Oops, sorry.”
“My fault. I wasn’t paying attention.” I didn’t move out from under his hand.
For three breaths, his warm fingers gripped my arm and his hip brushed mine, then he let go and stepped back. “Didn’t you have today off?”
I liked that he knew my schedule. “Yeah, had a meeting but it went super-fast and I figured I’d come on in and knock off an hour or two.”
Lee laughed. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
I found myself saying, “Yeah, I guess, but I couldn’t get up the nerve to do it.”
He sobered. “Why do you need nerve?”
“I have to go through my mom’s stuff in storage.” I shook my head. “Five months stuck here, a lot of it in deadly do-nothing boredom, and I’ve still never gotten round to opening the locker.”
“That’s rough.”
“We didn’t get along. She would come out to visit me in LA and tell me everything I was doing wrong with my life. I never came back here the last twenty years. But now everything she owned is waiting for me to do the sell-keep-pitch routine and…” I laughed at myself. “I don’t wanna. Waaah. Woe is me.”
“Hey. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Lee fixed a kindly gaze on mine. “Family stuff is hard. Death is hard.”
“I guess you see a lot of that in here,” I deflected.
“A fair bit.” He kept his tone soft. “We get some younger short-term rehab patients who’ll get better and go back to their lives, but the majority of our residents will pass away either here or after leaving us for a hospital.”
“Do you get used to losing people?”
“After a fashion. It’s less of a shock over time, but it’s always a grief. Your mom passed four years ago, right?”
“Yeah?” My rising tone made it sound like I didn’t know, but I was watching for his reaction.
