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Free-Show Joe is manning the only till in operation so I unpack my basket with a violent flourish. His eyes stay on the scanner.
I pay for a carrier bag and then he reads out my total, so I absentmindedly hand over Mitch’s notes as I pack away the food.
“Uh, ma’am?” he says suddenly, a fearful edge to his teenage twang.
I look up at the cashier and he readjusts his branded cap.
“You, um…” He turns back towards the reader, pressing buttons until the cash drawer pops open.
I frown.Am I still under? Mitch gave me forty – that covered my total.
But when he hands me my change I understand his bewilderment.
I look down at the cash in my hands and my lips part in surprise.
He really wasn’t kidding when he told me to fill up my basketandto get a cab back to Pine Hills.
Mitch didn’t give me forty dollars. He gave me fourhundred.
Chapter 8
Mitch
I pull up to the site on Friday just after six a.m., knowing that Tate’s going to be doing an early-start early-finish so that he can head off to spend a long weekend at River’s dorm. He parks up right beside me and when I glance at him through my driver’s side window he points up at the sky. It’s a dark gloomy blue, yesterday’s storm apparently only the start. It isn’t drizzling right now but it looks like it will soon, so today is probably going to be an indoors kind of day, working on re-tiling and re-flooring the cabins, rather than filing down the furniture in the make-shift workshop space we erected a few weeks ago.
I get out of the truck as he locks up his Ford.
“It’s grim as shit,” I grumble and he breathes out a laugh. “I’m seriously thinking that the rest of the big pieces are gonna have to be made over at my place.”
We both squint up at the sky and he nods his head in agreement. I’ve occasionally used the garage at my house to store my truck or, in the wintertime, Tate’s motorbike, but more often than not I use it solely as a workshop.
“We’ll make them, haul them in the back of the truck, cover them with the tarp, and then bring them up here as and when they’re finished.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Easy.”
Then we’re walking over to the office to get the keys to unlock the cabins. As I unlock the door to the portacabin my eyes stray up the sloped valley, over to Harper’s bungalow.
Usually by now her curtains would be open. Did she get a cab yesterday after I saw her in the store? Surely she wouldn’t have walked back here in the rain.
I bite at my bottom lip as I push open the door, Tate waiting on the steps as I go to grab the keys.
Did she come back at all last night? I mean, how the hell would I know?
The only thing that Idoknow is the fact that she definitely didn’t call me.
I should be happy about that, because that means that there were no problems, but I feel a tight twist in my gut. I wish that she’d open the curtains so I could just know that she got back safe.
And alone.
The thought of her pulling open those curtains and then seeing a guy cosying up right behind her is enough to make me slam the door harder than I usually would as I leave the office. Tate flashes me a look and I shake my head apologetically.
“Feeling a little rough,” I tell him, as if he won’t see right through me.
He gives me a prolonged look and then says, “Sure. But just know that you can… if you want to, you can talk to me about it.”
I can’t stop the chuckle that rumbles through my chest. When your kid tries to sort out your problems? That is singlehandedly the cutest thing ever.
“Tate,” I say, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It’s nothing, I promise.”
