don’t think he’ll give it to you. Not until his car is fixed.”
She glanced at me, then back at the road. “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this? Why didn’t you tell me this was going on?”
We sailed past open umbrellas, people running with coats and newspapers over their heads. I waited, saying nothing. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
She glanced at me again.
“You seemed like you had enough to worry about,” I said. “You know what I mean? You sort of have your own problems.”
She was quiet. A gust of wind made the rain blow sideways. A plastic garbage can rolled off the curb and into the road. She swerved hard to the left, and then back. Bowzer sighed and moved to her other arm.
“I know,” she said. “But I still want to help you with this.”
I could see the roof of the Union rising up over the hill. Dread weighed heavy in my chest. “I don’t know that you can, Mom. He’s kind of a scary guy.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s a college kid living by a golf course.”
“He deals drugs.”
She glanced at me. “How do you know?”
“I don’t. Just rumors.”
She tapped her fingers on the wheel and glanced at me again.
I clapped both hands over my eyes. “NO! I DO NOT DO DRUGS.”
“Lower your voice, please.” She looked at me with brief displeasure. “Fine. Well, good. That’s something that would scare me.” She shrugged. “This guy, he doesn’t scare me.” Under her breath, she added: “Not at this point.”
She did not, in fact, look even a little afraid. She was concentrating on driving, on getting us up the rain-slicked hill without sliding into the car in front of us or the car behind us, Bowzer still perched on her arm. She was wrong not to be scared, I thought. I was afraid of him, and it seemed unlikely that I had only been afraid out of my imagination and worry, the whole dilemma a creation of my own head.
She glanced at me. “What? Does he carry a gun or something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. That’s good. Is he going to hit me?”
There was laughter in her voice, a happy mocking.
“Mom. Don’t laugh. You don’t get it.”
“Switchblade?” She bulged her eyes. Bowzer was licking her chin. “Nunchucks? No. Wait. A shank? Like in prison movies?”
“It’s not funny. He’s creepy.”
“He likes to swear a lot. I got that. He likes to use the ‘f’ word on the phone.” She held Bowzer steady as she turned the wheel. “Is that supposed to make me afraid of him? His potty mouth?” She shook her head, her lips pursed. “I have absolutely had it with people using that kind of language.” We stopped behind a line of cars. “And who’s this Simone person? Is that a girlfriend? His moll? What?”
“It’s Haylie. Simone is Haylie Butterfield. Remember? I told you she changed her name to Simone? She’s Jimmy’s girlfriend. And she’s evil now.”
She pressed Bowzer’s head down to better see my face. “Little Haylie Butterfield? The girl you used to play with?” She held the flat of her hand just beneath her shoulder, which I guessed was the approximate height of little Haylie Butterfield when my mother knew her best.
I nodded.
“She was in your Girl Scout troop!”
She appeared stricken. She was driving fine, even with Bowzer still resting on her arm, but her jaw was clenched, her eyes wide. My mother had been our scout troop’s leader when Haylie and I were in fourth grade. The meetings were held in our basement, sunlight streaming down from the high windows, though she’d regularly opened up the kitchen to all fifteen of us so we could earn our cooking safety badges. My mother had, of course, performed all her scout leader duties with zest. She supervised cookie sales and first aid classes, and also a visit to a farm that trained Seeing Eye dogs. She taught herself to tie seven kinds of knots so she could teach us. Even so, I would not have thought that she would have taken all those campfire songs, with their rhyming lyrics about loyalty and kindness, so much to heart that years later, Haylie Butterfield’s rejection of Scout values would be what finally made her snap.
We were in front of the Union. She eased the van into a delivery zone, right next to the curb. I took out my phone, but I didn’t dial.
“Mom,” I said, as gently as I could, a swelling moving up in my