Chapter 5: Terms for Dinner

By the time I got Gus down in his drawer, the man from the hotel bar was standing at the bottom of the garage stairs.

I had lined a dresser drawer with a quilt, because the only bassinet in Gretna was in the church basement.

I came down in my socks with the baby monitor in my hand and stood on the second step so that I was above him.

"You dropped your post driver," I said.

"I know."

"It's a good one. I heard it hit."

He smiled, and it was the same crooked smile as before, shy at the edges.

"Janie," he said. "From Scottsdale."

"It's Hendry. Janie Hendry."

"I didn't have that part."

"You didn't ask for it."

"I asked three times," he said. "You said it didn't matter."

"It didn't, then."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"I called the hotel the next morning," he said. "I called the bartender. He said you'd paid in cash and left a note that said thank you."

"It was a good drink."

"It was a lemon drop."

Lyle came out of the back door with a dish towel on his shoulder and a pot in both hands.

"Zach," he said. "You're early. I wasn't done with the potatoes."

"I didn't know you had a tenant," Zach said.

"I didn't either until Thursday."

"Come eat," Lyle said, and that was that.

The kitchen was yellow and smelled of onions.

Lyle put me at one end of the table and Zach at the other and himself in the middle with the gravy.

I took a paper napkin and a pen from the junk drawer and wrote in capital letters.

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