Brooklyn and Cheyenne were both shaking their heads before I was done. “If Dad had sent Denver, then yes,” Brooklyn said. “He’d write her off, same as they wrote me off, not worth the trouble. But Harvey’s different.”
“He holds a grudge,” Cheyenne noted.
“Yeah, and he can’t stand losing.” Brooklyn forced a smile. “We’d have been better off to let you hit him on the head with your cane. That he maybe could accept. Instead, he lost to a ten-pound dog, a teen girl, and an elderly lady with a cell phone. I don’t think he’ll leave until he wipes out that memory.” He glanced at Cheyenne. “Which is why you can’t go anywhere without one of us.”
“I understand why, I just hate it. I’m going stir-crazy and there’s only so many times I can scrub the kitchen floor.”
Xandra wandered in and twined around Cheyenne’s ankles. She picked up the cat and hid her face in soft, cream-colored fur. I eyed her hunched shoulders, thinking about how often I’d done the same, losing myself in the comfort of a purring cat. Didn’t make the world go away, though.
How long will this go on? “Harvey has a job and kids, you said? He can’t just hang out here forever.”
Brooklyn shrugged. “No, but…one thing that community’s good for is mutual support. He probably has his mom watching the kids, and his job will wait for him.”
“Maybe you and Cheyenne should go away for a while. Stay with someone else till he has to give up.”
“Stay with whom? I don’t have the friends you do. Anyhow, I can’t take time off from my business. My regulars need care daily. If they have to do daycare somewhere else, even for a week, they might not come back.”
I wanted to offer to run the business while he was away, but the shelter was stretched too thin for me to do both. My phone rang. Neil. Speaking of the shelter. I answered, “Yeah, what’s up?”
“The insurance adjuster’s here with the plumber, looking at where we had that water leak. He has some questions for you, and if you can’t do it now, he says it’ll be a couple of weeks before he’s back this way.”
“Crap. All right. Tell him I’ll be there in twenty. Maybe twenty-five. I’ll need to call for a ride.”
“You got it. Sorry to drag you back in when you just left.” Neil cut the call.
“I can drive you,” Brooklyn offered. “Except no, that leaves Cheyenne home alone.” He hadn’t driven me anywhere since the encounter with Harvey. “Maybe she could drive you and hang out at the shelter, and bring you back.”
“Yeah!” She perked up, setting Xandra on the floor. “I haven’t seen the shelter. That would be cool.”
“You could come too,” I suggested to Brooklyn. “Show her around while I do the boring insurance and plumbing.”
“Sure.”
Cheyenne grinned at him, then her smile slipped. “Can we leave all the babies alone here? What if Harvey comes and tries to kidnap Sadie as a hostage.”
Brooklyn and I glanced at each other. Is Harvey that crazy? I raised an eyebrow and Brooklyn gave me a tiny nod. Well, crap. I suggested, “Ask Roger to keep an eye out?”
“Oh, good thought.”
Brooklyn and I had both liked his other-side-from-Mrs. Bollinger neighbor when Roger came to introduce himself yesterday. He’d apologized for not being around when we’d needed him. He was ex-military, about forty, and he’d heard about the Harvey mess from someone he knew in the sheriff’s department. He’d promised he was keeping an eye out, and swore that Harvey wouldn’t tangle with him. Roger’s air of competence made that sound like more of a fact than a boast.
I said, “We can stop by his place as we head out.”
“Ooh, yeah,” Cheyenne agreed. “Can we go now?”
“Jeans?” I suggested, looking at her bare legs in shorts. “If you want to play with the dogs.”
“Two minutes!” She dashed out of the kitchen, Xandra scampering behind and swatting at Cheyenne’s bare heels in fun.
Brooklyn’s sigh was heavy, and I pulled him into a hug. “You okay? Don’t want to come?”
“No, I do, just not sleeping well.”
Tell me something I don’t know. He’d had nightmares both nights since Harvey’s appearance, ones he didn’t want to recount. I hugged him tighter.
“And I hate that we can’t just settle into living our lives, that Cheyenne still has to be looking over her shoulder. At least when I left home, I was out. I didn’t worry about being dragged back to Dad.”
I kissed his silky hair, since I had no reassurance to offer that wouldn’t sound banal.
