Page 87 of A Little Too Late
“No idea,” Sheila says in a low voice. “Unless he feels guilty.”
“Maybe,” I grumble. “I think he’s ashamed of himself, but he’s too stubborn to say so.”
“Heshouldbe ashamed,” Sheila says loyally.
I don’t disagree. Mark and I spent many uncomfortable hours together today. The Sharpes’ visit had disrupted our routines last week, so we had a lot of ordinary resort business to settle together. Payroll, scheduling, and so on.
It was so awkward. I could hardly look him in the eye, and I’m sure I wasn’t good at hiding it. This tension won’t die, either, until he signs the resort over to the Sharpes and takes off to travel with Melody.
That’s only a couple of months away. I can grit my teeth until then.
My phone rings, and my heart leaps immediately.Reed. I pull it out of my pocket, and I’m immediately disappointed. The caller is Bert.
Hell.
I answer the phone. “Don’t tell me the raccoons are back.”
“No,” he says slowly. “But I got a situation. The big boss got bombed, and he’s crying on a peak lift chair.”
I run that sentence back through my head, and none of it makes sense. “The big boss… You mean Mark?”
“Of course I mean Mark. Haven’t seen ’im messed up in maybe ten years. But he used to do it on the regular.”
“But he doesn’t drink,” I insist.
Bert’s silence tells me everything I need to know.
And it must be bad, because otherwise Bert wouldn’t call. “Okay, what do you think I should do?” Frankly, raccoons are easier than this.
“I dunno. He’s not really dressed for sitting out there in the snow. Got no gloves or hat. How about I pull a sled around? You talk him onto it.”
“Fine. See you outside.”
“I’ll give you a fifteen-minute head start,” he says.
By the time I reach my boss, he’s lying back on one of the lift’s chairs, staring up at the sky. One leg dangles down to the snow, the other is bent, his foot propped on the seat. The chair sways gently when he sighs.
“Mark?” I say carefully. “Everything all right over here?”
“Hardly,” he grumbles. “Fuck the Sharpes and their fancy-ass whiskey. I had a ten-year chip.”
“A…what?” I ask, trying to understand.
“Ten years sober,” he slurs. “Now I don’t even have ten minutes.”
Yikes. This is not my area of expertise. “Those ten years still count, Mark.”
“Fuck everything.” He swings around and sits up properly.
Taking that as an invitation, I sit down beside him. “Was it really the Sharpes’ whiskey?”
He pulls a fancy, decorated flask out of his pocket and hands it to me.
There’s the Sharpe snake logo etched into the metal. “They gave this to you?”
“Fuckers. Told them a dozen times I don’t drink. One of ’em tucked that in my pocket on his way out.”
I don’t point out that he didn’t have to drink it, because I have no idea what his triggers are. I just put the flask in my own pocket. “You can fix this,” I say. “Where do you want to be in tenmoreyears?”
