Chapter 52

When I dump the ice, the sound covers their talk but only briefly. Then I’m leaning into the cooler and I can feel them staring at me. I hear more laughter, the scrape of a chair pushed back from a table. Now it starts.

I think of my da telling me I’ll get by, the sharp sting of his aftershave still poignant in my mind after all these years. Here’s where I disappear.

Coby’s voice cuts through the laughter like a knife, surprising me. “Sit down.”

“Aww, Coby,” one of his men starts.

Silence. I straighten up, turn around slowly on the stool, unsure of what’s happening. A young boy stands halfway between the tables and the counter—a nondescript kid with a shock of yellow hair that begs for a comb, watery eyes that remind me of puddles and a chipped tooth like a fang in the front of his mouth, that I see when he licks his lips.