Small Things You Promised novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Practice Files

Carlie reads Ty's broken promises aloud in front of his whole crew and learns where her air conditioner went, then loses her job to Lacy's father.

Waddell Heating & Air opens at seven.

I was in the parking lot at six fifty with my laptop under my arm.

Nine white trucks sat in a row with Ty's daddy's name on the doors.

The crews stood around them drinking gas-station coffee and loading coils.

Ty's truck pulled in at seven ten.

He saw my car and stopped walking.

"Carlie," he said, smiling for the men. "You come to say sorry early?"

"I came about your invoice."

I set the laptop on the hood of the nearest truck and opened it.

The metal was already warm.

"You billed me forty-two thousand dollars for three years of work," I said. "I'd like to go over the work."

"Not here."

"Here's fine."

A few of the men drifted closer.

One of them was the apprentice, a skinny kid with a sunburned nose who'd fixed my garbage disposal once when Ty forgot.

I read off the screen.

"May sixteenth, two years ago, 7:40 p.m. You said, I'll get a mini-split in this kitchen before June. No more cooking in an oven."

Somebody whistled under his breath.

"There are eleven more on this page," I said. "I have dates for every one."

"Carlie."

"I'm not doing this," Ty said.

I scrolled.

The yard was quiet except for a compressor kicking on somewhere.

Ty laughed. Nobody laughed with him.

"She writes down everything anybody says," he told the men. "It's a court reporter thing. It's kind of nuts."

"It's my job," I said. "You knew that when you moved in."

He held out his hand.

"Give me the laptop."

"No."

The apprentice cleared his throat.

"Boss," he said. "That mini-split's on the invoice?"

Ty turned and looked at him.

The kid kept going anyway.

"Line four," he said, reading over my shoulder. "Kitchen mini-split, twelve thousand BTU. That's the one we put in at Mrs. Crenshaw's in April. I carried the box."

Lacy's mother.

April.

"What day in April?" I said.

The apprentice thought about it.

"The eighteenth. It was a Saturday. It was hot."

It was the day I fainted.

I'd known Ty was at Lacy's mother's house. I hadn't known he was putting my air conditioner in it.

I looked at Ty.

His ears had gone red under the ball cap.

"It was a floor model," he said. "It's no big deal. I'd have gotten you another one."

"You billed me for it."

He snatched the invoice off my laptop where I'd laid it.

He tore it in half, then in half again, and let the pieces blow under the truck.

"There," he said. "Happy? Forget the invoice. I was trying to make a point."

The men went back to their coffee.

They thought it was over.

I closed the laptop.

"This was never about a floor, Ty."

"Then what's it about?"

I said it quietly, so only he could hear.

"Thirty-one people."

He stopped breathing for a second.

I watched it happen.

All the easy went out of his face.

For a moment he looked just like his late daddy in the photo over the shop door.

"I don't know what that means," he said.

"Yes, you do."

I walked back to my car.

My back was on fire, and I didn't let it show until I was behind the wheel.

I drove home with the windows down because the air in my car is broken too.

At noon Missy sent me a link with nine exclamation points.

It was Lacy.

She was sitting on a white couch in soft light, holding a glass of iced tea.

"Y'all, I don't usually do this," she said, with a sad little laugh. "But my best friend's ex had a total breakdown at their engagement brunch. Over a messy floor."

She touched her heart.

"Mental health is real. I'm just praying for her."

Forty thousand views.

The comments were worse than the video.

I was reading them at the kitchen table when my phone rang.

It was the owner of the reporting firm.

I'd worked depositions for her for seven years. She'd sent me a ham every Christmas.

"Carlie, honey," she said. "I need you to understand this isn't personal."

"What isn't?"

"Lacy's daddy's law firm called this morning."

My stomach dropped.

"They send us a third of our work," she said. "They don't want you on any of their depositions. Or any deposition they're on the other side of."

"That's half of downtown."

"I know."

I heard her breathe out.

"I'm sorry. I have to let you go."

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