Heather Webber - Digging Up Trouble

Which was all too much to spill on Riley, so I opted for something he could relate to. “I have a date.”

140

Heather Webber

“With Bo-bby?” he singsonged.

“Dude,” someone called just as I pushed open the door.

Riley turned and greeted the kid. “Hey, Goosh.” The pair completed a series of hand slaps that left me dizzy.

“Goosh?” I said. He was tall, thin. The black Growl uniform hung loosely from his arms, his legs. Pockmarks scarred his face and a scraggly goatee hid his chin.

Long stringy hair covered Goosh’s eyes. “It’s, like, ah, whattaya call it? A um, yeah, nickname.”

Thank God.

As he asked Riley, in a babbling almost incoherent string of words that would cause Mrs. Krauss to shudder, about covering for him the next day, I noticed how his words slurred. On closer inspection, his pupils were dark and wide.

My teeth set. The kid was clearly on something.

“Know him well?” I asked Riley as we climbed into my truck.

“We’re not tight or anything.”

I didn’t know how to ask what I wanted to know.

“Don’t worry.” Riley chucked his duffel bag in the space behind the seats. “I’m not doing drugs.”

I let out a breath of relief. “But Goosh is?”

Riley shrugged. “To each his own.”

It sounded like something Kevin would say, and on the whole he was a pretty good dad. After all, he’d had the fore-thought to leave Riley with me when he’d moved in with Ginger Ho. Barlow. Ginger Barlow.

“Well, okay, then. Doesn’t Bill mind, though? He has to notice.”

“Can’t do anything until Goosh fails a random drug test.

So far he hasn’t. Bill can get sued otherwise, since Goosh is actually pretty good at his job.”

Sued. I shuddered. I never wanted to hear that word again.

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141

I put the truck in reverse, then into drive. As we drove past Growl’s door I couldn’t help but notice Bill staring out at us.

Riley waved.

Me? I didn’t wave. But the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Sixteen

The Magic Sun Chinese Buffet had the best egg rolls ever. I was on my third.

“Not that hungry tonight?” Bobby asked.

“Ha. Ha.”

Actually, I hadn’t had much of an appetite until I walked in the door. The smells had done my stomach good. The hint of garlic, the soy sauce. Steamed vegetables.

It helped that with a full mouth I really couldn’t talk.

I wished Bobby would eat more. He’d been rambling since we sat down about this and that. Nerves.

He was nervous.

About talking.

With me.

About something important.

I reached for another egg roll and took a sip of my water with lemon. The one strike against Magic Sun was that they didn’t carry Dr Pepper. I forgave them because of the egg rolls.

Bobby pushed his plate aside. “Nina, we really need to talk.”

Mouth full, I said, “We’ve been talking.” Okay, he’d been talking. I’d been chewing.

Digging Up Trouble

143

He put his elbows on the table, leaned in. His dark blue eyes told me this was serious.

I’d known that, though, hadn’t I?

I set my half-eaten egg roll down, pushed my plate aside too.

“All right.” I put my elbows on the table in complete defi-ance of every one of my mother’s manner lessons.

“I know you’ve been preoccupied lately, what with the death and all.”

Great. I hadn’t even been thinking of that. I’d been too wound up in what Bobby was going to say, do.

Now all I could see was Russ Grabinsky’s stick figure outline in my head.

The egg rolls weren’t sitting too well.

“Nina?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

I nodded.

“Well, I have something I have to ask you. Something important. That I need you to think about. I know it’s bad timing, but I need to know.”

I braced myself. Was this really it? Was he asking me to marry him? Here? In the Magic Sun? If I said yes, would they put our picture over this little booth?

But I wasn’t saying yes, was I? I couldn’t. Not with Kevin, not with everything going on.

“Are you listening, Nina?”

I looked at Bobby. He was everything a girl could want.

Everything. I wasn’t blind. I saw his faults. Actually . . . I tried to think of a fault.

There had to be something.

“Nina?”

“Hmm?”

“Listening?”

144

Heather Webber

I loved him. I did. It was a mixed-up sort of love, to be sure, because of all my confused feelings about Kevin, but it was love.

But marriage . . .

I couldn’t.

It was too much, too soon.

Absolutely not.

No way.

“Nina?”

“Yes!” I shouted. The little Chinese woman tending the buffet dropped a pan of won-tons.

“Sorry,” I said.

She hurriedly stuffed won-tons into the pan and looked at me as if I was possessed.

Bobby was smiling. “What?” I asked.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, what? What?” Had I just agreed to marry him when he hadn’t even asked?

He shook his head.

I reached for my egg roll.

I had been going to say yes.

Yes.

What was wrong with me?

“Listen.”

I swallowed. “I’m listening.”

“I’ve got a job offer. Principal of an elementary school.”

“Bobby! That’s great!” I leaned over, took his face in my hands and kissed him.

He didn’t kiss back.

I sat back. “Not so great? Isn’t being a principal what you’ve wanted?” I noticed there was paint under his short fingernails. White paint. Being a principal meant no more painting houses during the summer.

“It is.”

Digging Up Trouble

145

“But?” My stomach started to hurt again.

“It’s in Tampa.”

“Tampa?”

“Florida.”

“Oh.”

“I know.”

Kevin and I had once taken Riley to Disney World. It took us fourteen hours to drive there. Tampa had to be close to that.

Fourteen hours by car. Three by plane.

It would make dating tough.

I bit the inside of my cheek to stem the tingling in my nose, my eyes.

I would not cry.

This was something Bobby wanted.

Deserved.

“When do you leave?”

He reached across the table, took my hand. “That’s just it, Nina.”

“What is?”

“I guess that’s up to you.”

“Me? How?”

“There’s only one thing keeping me here.”

The tingling started again.

“And I need to know. Do I stay?” He squeezed my hand.

“Or do I go?”

Tam was asleep by the time I made it to the hospital. I set Sassy, her African violet, on her bedside table, and I swear the thing looked perkier immediately.

There was evidence my mother had been there, namely the French chocolates and the custom balloon that read “Get well, chérie .”

The curtain around Brickhouse’s bed was pulled tight. It was just as well. I didn’t want to see her right now.

146

Heather Webber

On my way out of the Magic Sun, I’d grabbed a handful of fortune cookies. Not one of them told me what to do with Bobby, though I now had enough lottery numbers for the next month.

He’d kissed me good-bye, helped me into my car, and watched me drive away.

I’d told him I needed some time.

He hadn’t looked surprised. Just sad.

Which broke my heart.

Should I stay or should I go?

It was a lot of pressure, and I decided after my fifth fortune cookie, that it wasn’t a fair question. To lay that all on me. To let me decide his fate. What if I said stay and then things didn’t work out between us? What if I said go and it was the worst mistake I’d ever made?