Ladies' Night, Andrews, Kay [best time to read books .txt] 📗

“Daddy?”

“Hey, Bo,” Wyatt said, relieved to hear his son’s voice. “Grandpa and I are waiting on you. We’re having your favorite, mac ’n’ cheese.”

Bo sniffed, and then, in a thin, wobbly voice, “Mom says if you want me, you gotta come pick me up.”

Wyatt frowned. That had not been the agreement.

“Sure thing,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”

Now Bo was crying. “But, I’m not at Mom’s house. I’m at Luke’s friend’s house, and it’s way far away.”

He heard Callie’s voice in the background. “Just tell him you’ll see him in the morning. Your dad will understand.”

“But I wanna see Daddy,” he heard Bo wailing, and his heart sank.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he heard Callie say.

And then she was on the phone, her voice crisp and unapologetic.

“Look, Wy, we’ve had a little change of plans. We went over to St. Pete Beach with Luke for a work thing, and with Friday traffic and everything, we’re just not gonna make it back in time tonight. You understand, right? I’ll drop him off first thing in the morning.”

“This is crap, Callie,” Wyatt protested. “You were supposed to bring Bo here as soon as school was out, four hours ago. Now you call me and tell me you took him all the way to St. Pete? And I’m supposed to be okay with that?”

“You’re supposed to be okay with doing what’s good for your son,” Callie snapped. “Luke’s friends live right on the beach here, and they have a pool, and Bo was having a blast until he all of a sudden decided he needed to talk to you. The next thing I know, he’s blubbering and saying he wants to leave. And if we leave now, with traffic and everything, he’ll be asleep by the time we get him there anyway. So what’s the difference if you get him tonight or tomorrow morning?”

“The difference is, I haven’t seen him in three days,” Wyatt said, feeling his chest tighten with anger. “I made plans for tonight, with Dad and Bo.”

“Whoop-dee-shit,” she said. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll pack his ass up now, and we’ll get in the car and drive him all the way back over there so you can see him. Asleep.”

Wyatt took a deep breath. “I wish you wouldn’t cuss in front of him. But all right, he can stay. As long as you have him here first thing in the morning. And since you’ve got him tonight, I want him to spend Sunday night with me.”

“Great.” She hung up without another word.

10

Gracenotes

Despite what you might think, I am definitely not a neat freak. My desk is frequently a disaster area, and dust bunnies are not an endangered species at my house. But truthfully, I get deep personal satisfaction out of making my surroundings beautiful—and comfortable.

I’ve learned a few tricks that make housekeeping less drudgery and more delight. For one thing, I try and tidy up every night before bedtime. Dishes always get put in the dishwasher—is there anything more depressing in the morning than a sinkful of greasy crockery? I spritz the sink and kitchen counters with my favorite all-purpose organic cleanser, watered-down white vinegar.

In the morning, after I’ve showered, I use more of my diluted vinegar-water spray to freshen up the tub and shower surfaces, and I keep a special “squeegee” under my bathroom sink to allow me to wipe down the glass shower door before it gets any annoying water spots or streaks.

*   *   *

On the Wednesday after her court appearance, Grace flipped the last of the heavy wooden chairs onto the tabletop. She dipped the mop in the bucketful of scalding soapy water, then, with rubber gloved hands, wrung out the excess soap. She swished the mop back and forth across the Sandbox’s gritty linoleum floor, halfheartedly listening to the morning news roundup of traffic accidents, taxpayer revolts, and local political skullduggery.

The smell of coffee somehow managed to waft through the biting aroma of Pine-Sol. Her mother was standing at the bar, holding out a freshly brewed pot.

“Come on, hon,” Rochelle urged. “It’s early. You can stop for one cup. That floor ain’t going nowhere.”

It was barely eight o’clock. Grace had been up since six, taking a run along the quiet predawn streets of Cortez while it was still relatively cool, then starting in on her new ritual of swabbing down the restaurant, from floor to ceiling.

Out of boredom and desperation, in the weeks since she’d moved in, Grace had been waging a one-woman war on the Sandbox’s decades-old accumulation of grease, grime, and clutter.

She’d started in the storeroom, clearing out an entire Dumpster’s worth of antiquated equipment, a deep fryer her father had always meant to fix, an ice machine that had stopped working ten years earlier, boxes and crates of old business records, food service catalogs, and broken chairs and tables.

From there she’d moved on to the kitchen, ruthlessly tossing anything and everything that wasn’t essential to their food-service operation. She’d inspected every glass, dish, and piece of cutlery, consigning anything chipped, bent, or discolored to a crate she’d allocated for the local homeless shelter’s soup kitchen.

Along the way, she’d had to abandon all her old, genteel ideas about housecleaning. Diluted vinegar and baking soda were useless in her dust-busting efforts here. Now, her weapons of choice included every industrial-strength, commercial-grade cleaner she could find at the local janitorial supply house.

Grace set her mop aside, peeled off the rubber gloves, and sipped her coffee. She gestured around the room. “I feel like I’m finally making some headway, don’t you?”

Her mother shrugged. “Place doesn’t even smell like a bar anymore. You’ve scrubbed away every last trace of the Sandbox ambiance.”

“Mom, that wasn’t ambiance, it was crud. Years’ and years’ worth of baked-on, smoked-in, ground-down crud. This place was gross. Can’t you just admit you like it better clean?”

Rochelle rested a hand on the old mahogany bar. “I liked it the way it was,” she said pointedly. “We were shabby before shabby got cool. Now it’s like a