Rose didn’t look at her; she couldn’t.
“I was so sure you had this one,” Mia said.
Rose felt warmth on her hand and looked down. Jean had placed her weathered palm on top of Rose’s fingers.
“You’re a fighter—it’ll happen for you. It might take a while, but it will happen.”
For the first time that night, the tightness in Rose’s throat loosened.
Jean withdrew her hand and placed two envelopes between them on the bar.
“Patronizing or not, our guest tips well.”
* * *
The air felt cooler as Mia and Rose stepped off the porch outside. The cicadas were trilling loudly. Despite everything, Rose felt a sense of victory. She’d done it. She’d got through the shift, and now she could go home to grieve, while she still had a home. She looked back at the tavern as they walked toward Mia’s car, wondering again about the guest, Will. He must be a relative of someone, down for some family occasion. She couldn’t think of any other reason someone would want to stay in this town for a whole week.
“Oh.” Mia paused next to her.
“What?”
Mia ran to her beat-up old Auster and pulled a parking ticket from the windscreen. She looked at her watch.
“I was only three minutes late!”
“They must have been waiting for it to tick over.”
They looked around. The street was empty. Getting in the car, Mia held the ticket up to the interior light.
“It’s more than I even made on my shift.”
Rose took her envelope from her bag and put it on the dashboard.
“You don’t have to,” Mia said, but Rose could already hear the relief in her voice.
“I know.”
They didn’t talk as Mia drove. The radio played some terrible new pop song that Rose had heard one too many times, but she knew better than to mess with the stereo in Mia’s car. She stared out the window, looking forward to the oblivion of sleep. She slid her heels out of her shoes. Tomorrow, she decided, she wouldn’t wear shoes at all. The tavern was closed on Tuesdays, so maybe she wouldn’t even get out of bed.
The car went past the fossickers. At first it was just a few tents set up in and around a gutted old cottage that had been there for forever. Now it was a real community. People lived in cars; structures were set up. Some people just slept under the stars. It was warm enough. They kept to themselves, so the cops didn’t seem to bother them, even though they all sported missing teeth and raging meth addictions. Rose hadn’t known why they were called the fossickers at first, but then found a couple of years back that they fossicked for opals and sold them on the black market. That was how they got by. Her stomach clenched with fear and she looked down at her hands. She would never end up there.
“So, I heard some great gossip today.” Mia couldn’t stand to sit in silence for too long. No matter how miserable she was, Mia always seemed to feel better when she was talking. “Maybe you can write your next article about it? Working at a cop bar has got to be good for something.”
Unlike Mia, Rose often craved solitude. She didn’t need to answer anyway. Mia usually seemed perfectly happy to just listen to the sound of her own voice chirping away.
“Apparently someone has been leaving porcelain dolls on doorsteps of houses, and the dolls look like the little girls that live in the house. How freaky is that?”
Rose snapped her head around.
“The cops are worried it might mean something. Like maybe it’s a pedophile marking his victims.”
Rose gaped at her.
“What?” asked Mia.
Rose scrambled through her bag, trying to find her cell phone, the image of Laura in her mind, sleeping cheek to cheek with her tiny porcelain twin.
“Help! Stop it!” the child wailed.
Frank had tried asking nicely. Now he was prying the doll out of the little girl’s hands. When he’d imagined being a cop, he’d never thought fighting kids for their toys would be part of the job.
“She’s mine!” Laura yelled, just as Frank gave the thing a proper tug, released it from the kid’s iron grip.
Laura stared up at him, looking more angry than upset, and kicked him right in the shins.
“Laura!” Rose yelled at the little shit as she ran out of the room and slammed her bedroom door.
Frank rubbed his shin. She’d got him right on the bone. Truth was, it was throbbing.
“Sorry,” said Rose, looking him up and down. He stopped rubbing his leg and grinned.
“No stress,” he said. He should have guessed Rose’s sister would be like that. Cutest damn kid you ever saw but a real little fighter. When she grew up, she was going to break hearts. That was for sure.
Frank could see the worry in Rose’s eyes, and if he were honest, he liked it. Rose had never looked at him like this before, like he had something to give, like he could protect her. Ben Riley’s mother and the arsonist felt a million miles away now.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“About what?” asked Bazza. Frank won the fight not to swear under his breath. That guy could be an absolute moron sometimes.
He put a hand on Rose’s soft arm. Every part of him wanted to slide his hand up and down her arm, feel her warm unblemished skin. He wondered whether her whole body was that same pale honey, or whether the parts of her that didn’t see the sun were still the color of cream. He could feel his pants tighten ever so slightly.
“I really don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” he said, letting go of her before it really got out of hand. He was here as a professional.
“That’s not what you said at the station yesterday,” Bazza interjected from next to him.
“Shut up, Baz,” he said out of the side of his mouth, his budding erection deflating instantly. He smiled apologetically at Rose. “You’ve told your mum about this, right?”
“Yeah, but she’s doing a double today.”
“We’ll let you know if there are any developments, but if you’re feeling at all worried, you can call me and I’ll be here in a flash.”
* * *
“What did we say about sharing police information?” Frank said to Bazza as they walked back to the car. The sky above them was overcast, but still it was hot and slimy.
