Page 22 of Windlass

Good. She’d picked up on Stevie’s thoughts.

“Yeah, actually. My dad works nights, so, he’s not around much. I usually take care of Jaq.”

Which explained the exhaustion in the kid’s face.

“Which Big Jim’s do you work at?” Stevie nodded at Sarah’s uniform. “The one on Elm, or the one where the mall used to be?”

“Elm.”

“That’s not too far,” she said to Ivy. “They have pretty good sandwiches. Ever been?”

“Maybe? Hang on, I know I left a permission form in my car. I’ll be right back.”

Ivy had asked her sister, a lawyer, to write one up, Stevie remembered as Ivy walked over to her truck and left Sarah and Stevie to stare at each other.

“Do you like horses?” Stevie asked, unsure how to engage the tired teen in front of her.

“Yeah. Never had time to ride, though.”

“Did you just finish your senior year?”

“Finally.”

“I hear you there.” Stevie did not ask what Sarah planned to do next. Maybe she was tired from partying late with her friends, but there was an edge to the exhaustion that suggested it was chronic. “Long shift?”

“Yeah.”

“Jaq’s a good worker. Must run in the family.”

“In our generation.”

Her suspicions about Jaq’s parents, and the reason the sister had shown up instead, intensified.

“Got it.” Ivy returned with a folded paper in her hand. “Just fill this out and have a parent or guardian over eighteen sign; then Jaq is all set to ride. She’ll need a helmet, and—”

“She can borrow mine,” said Stevie, seeing the panic blossom anew in Sarah’s eyes. “It’s adjustable, and I have a small head. Small ego, too.”

They ended the conversation shortly after that, and Sarah trudged back to a beat-up Corolla that might have once been gray or white or silver, but was now a sickly shade of matte brown, save for the driver’s side door, which had been replaced with a green one.

“We know that she’s going to forge a parent’s signature, right?” Stevie said when the car door had shut.

“One hundred percent. You okay with that?”

“Ask your sister. Or maybe don’t. Plausible deniability and all.”

“Client confidentiality. She won’t say anything.”

The legality was worrisome, but, then again, there was no way to prove the signature was forged without confronting Jaq’s parents—parent? Sarah had only mentioned a father, and Stevie suspected Sarah was here because he didn’t give two shits. That would also explain the state of Jaq’s clothes. Stevie had grown up with plenty of kids like that, and was related to a few more.

“Then ask your sister if we’re covered by insurance. Otherwise, I’m not worried about it.” She waved at the receding car as it lurched unsteadily onto the road. “I’m beginning to think we’re one of the only good things the kid has going for her.”

Angie sat on the back deck, sketchbook resting idly in her lap, half-smoked bowl of weed long since cooled on the table while the sun set over the orchard in a spray of pink and orange. Her body relaxed into the deck chair. She was thinking, for no particular reason, of the day she’d first met Stevie.

Her interview at Seal Cove Veterinary Clinic had gone well—so well that they’d hired her on the spot, giving her the out she needed from her previous job, where she’d discovered the hard way, again, why fucking her boss was a bad idea. She’d vowed that would not happen at Seal Cove.

On her first day, she’d been so nervous she’d forgotten to pack a lunch, and was too broke to order out. She’d sat in the break room anyway. Stevie, who had been on clinics that day instead of the mobile service, had taken her break at the same time. She’d set an apple and a granola bar down in front of Angie, saying, “Hey, Stephanie Ward, but call me Stevie or I’ll cry.”

“Angela, but my friends call me Angie. You’ll cry?”

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