Page 5 of Devil's Work: Dark

“I’ll keep him shadowing me,” Sarge responds. “If you all are for it, he knows me. I’ll keep him with me. I’ll talk to Greer so she knows not to mention certain things in his presence.”

“Talk amongst yourselves,” Vlad invites. “When you’re ready, we’ll vote.”

The other brothers discuss it, but I said what I have to say. I don’t care if we do it, but he can’t know about several areas of our life. After about fifteen more minutes of them chewing the fat, Reap turns to Vlad. “I think we’re ready.”

“Fine,” Vlad says. “All those in favor of allowing Jack to shadow Sarge, with limits, say ‘yay.’”

Sarge. “Yay.”

Cutter. “Yay.”

Roughneck. “Yay.”

Reaper. “Yay.”

“Dark?” Vlad asks.

“If you can guarantee he won’t be up in our shit, then yay.”

“Right.” Vlad brings his fist down on the edge of a table because we still haven’t bought a fucking gavel yet. “Then we’ll let him shadow. Now, my woman is waiting for me at home with a tub of Cool Whip and a willingness to get dirty. I’m out.” Our president shoves back from his chair and leaves the war room without giving any of us a second glance.

With everything else we got piled on our plates, now we get to babysit the photojournalist. I need a drink. Nashville will have to wait.

3

RAE

Miss Mable, my neighbor, bought one of those Slip ’n Slides for her grandkids and asked if I wanted to bring Ty out to play on it. That was yesterday.

The sweltering summer made it impossible to breathe inside the stuffy trailer without air. We do have two air conditioning units—one at each end of the place—to keep it relatively cool, but during peak hours, the electric company advises we keep as many appliances turned off as possible to save money.

Of course, peak hours for the electric company come at the hottest parts of the damn day. I’d been warned by my sister, Dela, that summers in Kentucky were especially hot and humid, and August was the worst of it.

I learned that when I first moved here last year. Now that we’re firmly ensconced in the bosom of August once again, I’m reminded why I hate August in Kentucky. This year has been one of the hottest summers on record. So when Miss Mable invited us, I took her up on it. Not my water, not my dime.

Ty slipped and slided while Lacy splashed in the sprinklers keeping the plastic wet. Mable and I chatted and sipped icy lemonade.

“Little Ty starting kindergarten?” she asked. The wrinkled skin around her friendly brown eyes sagged in the heat as she looked earnestly into mine.

I can honestly say that I’d never once thought of kindergarten for any reason until she brought it up. What kind of mother am I to not think about kindergarten? With his father dying and the move, I kept him home with me. I taught him his letters and numbers and he’s been learning to read. If Jim were still alive, he’d have gone to school like every other kid his age. This is my hang-up and I realize now with Mable asking, that I have to get over it.

Now that’s all I can think about.

He seems a little emotionally young, but I have an appointment with a Kentucky Works program to help me find a job. With Lacy being so young, it wasn’t feasible before. But the price of daycare drops considerably once they reach two years old.

Paying for daycare for two kids is out of my budget, but if Ty goes to kindergarten, I think I could pull it off and still get us a little bit ahead. We might get to live a life where Count Chocula is a sugar treat, not a money treat—dare to dream.

I used my slow cooker to make us pasta bake for dinner to avoid heating up the entire house by turning on the oven.

Lacy, per her usual, has sauce smeared over her face and hands, in her hair, on her lap. Normally, the TV stays off during dinner, but PBS started broadcasting old episodes ofMr. Rogers’ Neighborhoodat dinner time—on a side note, what I found out they called supper down here. Where I grew up it’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Down here, it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, and supper, which I found out when I invited Miss Mable over for dinner and she showed up at noon—Ty just loves Daniel Tiger, so I let him watch today.

My phone rings. Dela’s name lights up the screen. I smile as I answer, missing her something fierce. “Hey,” I say into the receiver. “How’s my favorite sister?”

She laughs. “Same as usual. It’s hot, but there’s a nice pool at my complex.”

“I miss pools,” I sigh. Jim and I had an inground pool in our backyard. We’d only lived in that house for a year when the accident happened. It was our dream house.

Reality never lives up to the dream. We were in that pool, a pregnant me with a toddler Ty, when we got the news that changed the course of our lives. Police officers rounded the house, knocking on the gate, then entering when I told them to come in.

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