“Yeah.”
“We need to talk to you, if we could.”
Ronnie was aware of Clarice listening, although her back was turned. “I’m five minutes from taking a break. Could this wait until then? I’ll meet you outside.”
“Sure.”
The police officers didn’t go outside. They grabbed a pair of sodas from the case and seated themselves at one of the round tables, so they were facing Ronnie, watching her. They talked in low, casual voices, but one of them was always looking at her, sometimes both. And with Clarice now stealing looks at her, too, Ronnie couldn’t help feeling nervous. It had been a long time since so many people had looked at her at once.
The five minutes passed slowly, a fact that Ronnie registered as odd. Given that she didn’t want to talk to them, the minute hand on the big Coca-Cola clock should have shot forward five spaces in a matter of seconds. But the time dragged. She waited on a few more customers, teenage girls. Wait, she was a teenage girl, too. She forgot that sometimes. She felt like she had more in common with Clarice than she did with the girls on the other side of the counter. They compared calluses, the ones they got from standing, and talked about how their legs ached at the end of the day.
“You take your break,” Clarice said at last. “I can watch the cash register, slow as it is.”
She seemed to be trying to say something else with her kind brown eyes, but what? Was she disappointed in Ronnie because police officers had come to talk to her? She would be even more disappointed if she knew about Ronnie’s past. Would she let Ronnie continue to work here? Probably not. Even if she did, she wouldn’t be Ronnie’s friend anymore. She would treat her with the cold, polite reserve that she used on the customers. When the teenage girls had stood in front of the counter, giggling and changing their orders back and forth, Ronnie could feel Clarice’s dislike for them. White, silly, self-important, foolish. She would die if Clarice treated her that way.
But if Clarice found out about Olivia Barnes, she would think Ronnie was one of those white people who hated black people. That had been another one of the lies told by Maddy’s mom. Of all the things that Ronnie had done, or been accused of doing, this detail remained so sharp. She had said a horrible word, the one word you could never take back. That was why most people believed Alice over her, when it came down to it. Alice had never said the horrible word.
“I just have to go in the back,” she told the detectives, “and hang up my apron. We’re not allowed to wear them on break. It has something to do with the Health Department.”
Clarice probably gave her an odd look at that, knowing it for the lie it was, but Ronnie didn’t care. She pushed her way back into the kitchen, where O’lene was studying the ovens.
“Hey, Ronnie,” she said, “do I have to put in a new batch of anything? Or can we make it to three P.M. with what we’ve got?”
“What we’ve got,” Ronnie said tonelessly. She folded her apron, put it on top of one of the boxes, and opened the back door, the one used for delivery.
“Hey, what the-”
But she was already out of O’lene’s earshot, running blindly toward Route 40. She didn’t know where she was going to go, or what she was going to do. The only thing she knew was that when they came for you, their minds were already made up. So you might as well run, and be free for a few hours longer. You might as well run.
It was just before 6 P.M. when Alice let herself into the house, blinking violently. Helen didn’t approve of air-conditioning-that was her exact word, approve, as if it were an idea, or a habit-and she kept the house dark and shuttered in the summertime. It worked, actually, and the living room was surprisingly pleasant. But the abrupt change in light was hard on Alice ’s eyes. She swore she could actually feel her irises opening, desperate to find enough light to focus in the dim room.
Then she saw Helen, sitting in an old easy chair unearthed from the Salvation Army and covered in a bright flowery print that Helen had raved about. Marimekko, Alice recalled. “I had dresses made out of this when I was your age,” Helen had said. Now she sat in the chair, still in her robe, although it was almost dinnertime.
“Some people came looking for you.”
“People?”
“Police detectives.”
“What did they want?”
“They want to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“They wouldn’t tell me. Why don’t you?”
“How can I tell you what I don’t know?”
“Are you sure you don’t know?”
“Of course I’m sure.” Alice lowered herself onto the sofa, removed her shoes, and examined the soles of her feet. She had been using a special cream on her heels, but they were still cracked and split from her rambling, as she had come to think of her long walks. She wished she knew someone other than Helen who might ask what she was up to these days, because she would like to use that answer: “Me? Oh, I’ve been rambling.” It sounded romantic.
“ Alice -I can’t go through this again.”
“What?”
“You know.”
Alice did, but she wanted Helen to say it. “I don’t have a clue what you mean.”
“ Alice, baby.”
“Don’t call me baby.”
“You are my baby. My one and only. You will always be my baby.”
“Right,” Alice said, with a short bark of a laugh. “Right.”
“Why would the police want to talk to you?”
“I told you, I don’t know. But I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
She held out her hand, weary in a way she hadn’t been coming up the walk. Then she had felt energized, despite her long day of rambling. She had been thinking about their Saturday night pizza, which Helen insisted on ordering from one of those gourmet places that served pizza with things like shrimp and chicken fajitas and even stuffed grape leaves. Alice would have been happy with a plain cheese from Domino’s. Instead, she usually ordered something called a “margherita,” which was just tomato-and-cheese in disguise. So Helen. She kept giving ordinary things the most extraordinary names. A tomato-and-cheese pizza became margherita, a piece of fabric was Marimekko.
Helen stared, perplexed, at Alice ’s outstretched hand.
“They gave you a card, right? Well, give it to me.”
Helen fished it out of her robe pocket and handed it over. Nancy Porter. Baltimore County Homicide.
“Are you going to call?” Helen asked, as if Alice were the adult, the one who got to make decisions.