He’d never be able to find the place without a guide, but she appreciated his gesture.
“Yeah, that’d be good. Call first, okay? So we know to expect you.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Aidan? I’m really glad you’re here.”
He made a sound that was half-embarrassed, half-sympathetic. “Night.”
She hung up and tiptoed back to bed. When she slid beneath the sheets, Mercy turned toward her in his sleep, banded a heavy arm across her waist and pulled her into his chest.
Ava rested her face against his fevered skin and closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she thought. Just hold on until tomorrow.
Forty-Eight
A thin fog hugged the turf, early sunlight catching in all the tiny dew droplets clinging to the grass. Voices echoed off the stadium seating as sellers set up their tents and unpacked boxes of sale items. Maggie worked side by side with Jackie, arranging their smaller offerings on black-draped folding tables. The larger items – furniture and old bicycles, Mina’s baby gear – were set up at the back of their tent, where they’d be out of the way of the foot traffic.
Maggie didn’t know what to think about Jackie, so she’d decided, for the moment, not to think about her at all. She was here, she was helping, she was acting more like her normal self, so Maggie was shelving the tension until it was a better time to deal with it.
“Where do you want these to go, Mrs. T?” Leah asked, popping up on the other side of the table with a baggie full of hand-labeled price tags.
“It should say on each tag,” Maggie said. “Here’s the ribbons that you can use to tie them on.” She handed over a second baggie. “If there’s no label on one, come get me.”
Leah took the baggie and whisked away. “Sure thing.”
“Her family’s not operating a booth today?” Jackie asked when she was gone.
“Her mother’s a bit of a pack rat. I don’t guess they had anything to donate.”
“Do they know she’s here with us?”
“My guess?” Maggie made a face. “No. The Cooks were always good to Ava, but I don’t think their MC tolerance would stretch this far. No way would they want Leah here with us after what happened two days ago.”
“I figured as much.”
Harry and Carter returned from the truck with the Lean Dogs MC banner held between them.
Harry wrinkled his nose, a move that scrunched up his freckles and made the resemblance to his namesake even stronger. “You sure you want us to hang this?”
Maggie glanced across the tent-packed football field, the milling Knoxville residents unloading boxes and handcarts. “Yeah. Put it up. That’s kind of the point of this whole thing.”
Her hands stilled on the collection of holiday cheese knives she was laying out, attention fully on the black and white banner as the two boys climbed up on folding chairs and tacked each end to the front of their tent. The running black dog seemed to be leaping off the canvas as the breeze caught the banner and rippled it.
Two women at the tent across from them glanced up, first casually, and then doing double-takes as they processed the banner. One, a plump, gray-haired grandmotherly thing, let her eyes fall to Maggie’s face, her mouth slightly open with shock. She wondered the same thing that everyone on this field was going to wonder: How could any of them show themselves at a public function after two people had died on their doorstep?
Olivia came around with her clipboard, signing tent-runners in, at seven-fifteen. Maggie was convinced the woman had burned every pair of jeans she owned the day the ink dried on the divorce papers.Casualwas not a word in her repertoire.
This morning, she wore white twill pants and a salmon-colored turtleneck sweater that could only have been real cashmere. Her gold brooch, some sort of long-necked bird, a swan maybe, was studded with rubies mirrored in her earrings. Her severe haircut was, as usual, softened with the entire Estée Lauder collection, carefully applied. Her black flats left wet scuff marks on the grass.
She pulled up in front of the table without taking her eyes from her clipboard, an obvious snub.
“No, you’re not dreaming,” Maggie said with false brightness. “We showed up.”
Olivia glanced up slowly, lips pursed. “I can see that.”
“And who knows,” Maggie said, “maybe the lucky bastard who buys that old cabinet will find the brick of cocaine I forgot was taped to the bottom.”
For a second, Olivia looked like she almost smiled. Then she clicked out her pen and scribbled on her board. “You have to be broken down and cleared out by four,” she instructed. “Leave your tent abandoned at any point, and it will be taken down for you, and you will be unable to continue selling.”
