As soon as Carter opened the store the next morning, she called Jerome. “I’ll be there Monday,” she told him. “I can stay the week.” Reba had agreed to sub for her and pull double shifts. That would take more than half of Carter’s earnings, but she didn’t care. Roy would blow his stack.
Jerome asked if she could stay longer. “I wish,” she said. She told him about the baby, and he didn’t give her any of the granny business about getting old. Jerome was a professional. But he hadn’t minded that she had thanked the searchers, every one of them, every night. “You have a good heart,” he told her once, smiling in a way she hadn’t seen before. “I try,” she said. She’d wished then she could kiss his cheek, because of how hard everyone had worked, because of all they’d been through. Later, when they were cleaning up for the last time, she took off her astronaut cap and put it on Jerome’s head. “You’re really something,” she said.
After Carter hung up, the store was quiet until Roy’s friend, Phil, showed up with two men she didn’t know. The one they called Mick went in the back where the horse supplies were, brought out a bottle of iodine and handed it to Phil. Phil Lockwood didn’t have any animals. He’d bought another bottle only last month. She’d said that night to Roy, “We should take out the iodine. Just not sell it. People can go to town if they need it.”
“It’s not up to us to police what people do,” Roy told her.
“We don’t need to make it easier. Phil’s your friend. What’s he up to? I know he’s hard up, but come on.”
“If Phil needs money that bad, how else is he going to get it?”
For a while, Carter had kept a list of who bought iodine, figuring maybe the sheriff would want to know. One day a friend of her father’s came in. Arthur Kenny, a man she’d looked up to all her life, bought a six-ounce bottle that day and came back for another in two weeks. She gave up the list then.
Now she was ringing up Phil’s iodine and two bags of chips, and he wouldn’t even look at her. “Jenny doing all right?” she said. His wife was sweet, the quiet type, who had her hands full with three boys.
“She’s good,” Phil said. “I’ll tell her you said hello.” The other two were halfway out the door.
After they left, Carter made a list for Baton Rouge: hair net, the new stretch jersey top with the sweetheart neckline, her good jeans. She added the astronaut cap, for old time’s sake. Mostly it had sat on her dresser where she could see it every morning, but today she had put it on and stuffed her hair in a pony tail through the back opening. If she was going to sell it soon, she might as well be wearing it. She’d looked again at Col. Bradley’s signature—more like printing than cursive. At the one-week remembrance of the disaster at the VFW, Carter had watched his eyes brim with tears he wouldn’t let fall. Jenny Lockwood’s youngest boy had walked right up to him and handed him a rabbit’s foot. “In case you go back up there,” Richie said. The colonel thanked him, stroked it once or twice and gave it back. “I might not go again,” he said. “Maybe you’ll get there.”
When Grady came in around ten, Carter couldn’t help complaining about Roy. “I’m going to Baton Rouge,” she said. “He can’t stop me.”
“That’s no way to be. He thinks it’s for your own good.”
Carter had gone to the front window to pull the lever on the gas pump. “I’m leaving Monday. I swear.” Newland Sparks was outside, just sitting in his truck, looking in. She felt the whole bulky mess of his family. “I hate it here. This store, this job, this town.”
“Roy loves you. It counts for something.”
“I know.” She thought of the rumor that Grady’s wife had booted him out. Not everyone lived with someone who loved them. “It’s just that Roy is so backward about some things.”
“Might be he’s afraid.” Grady had come over to the window, and now he could see what she was watching. Newland Sparks had gotten out of his truck and was leaning against it, talking on his phone. Six months ago, he wouldn’t have had cell coverage this far from town. Then Sprint came, and Pizza Hut didn’t. This place never got what it needed most.
Grady put his arm around Carter’s shoulder. She could smell the Tide on his fresh shirt. He was chief of the volunteer fire squad, and when the shuttle came down, he’d become a local hero. He was a good guy, and some other woman was going to make him happy. In high school, though he ran with the college-bound crowd, he’d never let on there was any difference between the two of them. Maybe back then, there wasn’t. Maybe she’d had more possibilities than she thought.
Carter’s cell phone rang under the counter and when she answered, she heard Newland on the line. “Your hero Grady, he’s seeing Sara Farnsworth. How about that, Carter? Another man’s wife.” She pressed the end button. Grady had followed her to the counter. “Okay,” she said into the dead phone. “Okay.” Outside, Newland had put his face right up to the window, framing it with his free hand, peering in. He was smiling. Carter shoved the phone into her purse.
“That was quick,” Grady said.
Carter picked up a rag and began wiping the counter. “It was Roy. He’s on his way in.”
“I’ll stay ’til he gets here.”
“No.” She’d said that too fast. Grady looked startled, then hurt. She rubbed harder into the counter. “Roy’ll get so pissed when he sees all these coffee stains.”
“No? One minute you want my help, the next minute you don’t.”
“You got stuff to do. I know you do. Plus it’s Saturday. Don’t you have something planned?” Please, she thought. Tell me you’re watching a movie with Gloria Boland or even Jodie Tulane. Some woman who’s safely divorced.
“No plans. But it seems like you don’t want me here.” He glanced out the window.
“It’s not that. I’ll be fine. Promise.”
“Is it Roy? Is he suspicious of me? Because I can talk to him.”
“He’s in kind of a strange place these days.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.
Grady looked closely at her. Then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “but remember what I said.”
She watched him walk out and get in his truck, saying something to Newland over his shoulder. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t do any good. It might even make things worse. As soon as Grady drove off, Newland came through the door.
“You want to see Roy?” Carter said. “Roy’s in the back.”
“That’s funny. Didn’t see Roy’s truck.”
“He’s in the back. He drove in with me.”
Newland roamed around the aisles making junior high jokes about Sara Farnsworth. He brought a pack of crackers up to the register. “Don’t hear Roy back there,” he said. “What’s the matter, Carter? Don’t want to be alone with me?”
Carter rang up the sale and held out his change. When he grabbed her hand and pulled it to his crotch, pennies spilled to the counter. She was leaning awkwardly across the counter, her head close to his. With his other hand he pulled off her cap, then he let her go.
He was a child with a treasure, grinning like a schoolyard bully. Carter reached under the counter for her Glock and held it there. “Give it back,” she said.
Newland held her cap in the air, laughing. “Come and get it,” he said. When Carter pulled up the gun she aimed for the space between his arm and the floor, but just at that instant, he lowered his hand. The bullet went through the cap where Col. Bradley had signed it, grazing the tip of Newland Sparks’s thumb.
Roy hunched on a low stool by the fishing supplies, a laptop warming his knees. He counted the flipping jigs and spinnerbaits, and