Page 4 of Road Queens
“Cold.”
“So was she. Five years and nothing, not even a Facebook post. After ... after everything. Everything we went through and suffered for and made happen and ... nothing. For years.”
“You don’t use Facebook.”
“Well, it’s the thought that counts. Or something.”
“That’s how I found out. That whole check-in thing. ‘Cassandra Rivers is at Precinct 2, City of Minneapolis.’”
Amanda laughed; she couldn’t help it. “So it’s a version of ‘It’s complicated’? Wait. How’d you even find out? Are you guys still Facebook friends?”
“... no.”
“Youare! What the hell, Sidney? First, Facebook is problematic for too many reasons to go into. Second, she slashed us out of her life like the fat on pork tenderloin.”
Sidney shrugged. “I just like knowing what that bitch is up to. And where she is. Better than not knowing and then getting caught in more fallout.”
“She ran. And for nothing. There was no fallout.”
“And you don’t cook. How do you know how to prep tenderloin? How do you even know pork tenderloin is a thing?”
Amanda was still shaking her head and letting out a few tsks.
“Amanda ...” Sidney reached out, took Amanda’s small hand, squeezed.
Amanda stared down at their hands, her teeny pale paws and Sidney’s perma-tanned, long, slender fingers. If she turned Sidney’s hand palm up, then she’d see the scar Amanda gave her the day they met Cassandra. “This is an unsettling way for you to admire my manicure.”
“Knock it off; you wouldn’t get a manicure on a bet. She’s in trouble.”
“I wish I had a dollar for every time we said that about Cassandra ‘Goddamned’ Rivers. Oh, wait, I do, all three of us do, and I sunk it all into this place.” As Sidney shook her head and Dave sidled away, Amanda sighed. “She didn’t reach out.”
“Well, no. She didn’t. She shouldn’t have to.”
Amanda extricated her hand with minor difficulty. “You said it yourself, Sid; you found out on social media. If she wanted us, she would’ve called. That whole you-only-get-one-phone-call thing is a TV lie.”
“I don’t need a lect—”
“Copswantyou to call people for help; it keeps the machinery in motion. Cassandra could have called either of us. Multiple times. And then ordered pizza. With multiple toppings. And multiple delivery times. Breakfast pizza, lunch pizza, supper—”
“Amanda ...”
“But she didn’t. Well, she might’ve ordered pizzas, that hypoglycemic jerk. After she had ice cream, probably. But she didn’t reach out to either of us. Ergo, she doesn’t want our help. Ergo, she can just deal. She made it clear five years ago and every year since, and the deafening silence from her this morningalsomade it clear: she’s dead to us. Pardon the cliché.”
“She came running quick enough when my marriage—”
“Your fake marriage to your scammer husband.”
“—imploded.”
Hmm. It wasn’t like Sidney to bring up He Who Shalt Ne’er Be Named under any circumstances, never mind to make a point. Not that she’d named her husband in so many words. “Yeah, and then she turned her back on us.”
Sidney just looked at her.
“What?”
Nothing.
“Whaaaaaaat?” The swearing and sarcasm she could take, but when Sidney Derecho went all quiet and thoughtful? Torture.
