Chapter 25: She's Talking

On Sunday morning a man from the tool wholesaler came to sell me four hundred rake heads.

I had ordered forty.

The invoice said four hundred, and he was explaining that this was my mistake.

He wore a quilted vest and had a clipboard under one arm.

"Your dad always took the full pallet," he said.

"My dad is gone, and I ordered forty."

"Sure, hon. Who handles your purchasing?"

"I do."

He nodded and looked past me at the end of the counter.

Cain stood there in his dark overcoat with a paper cup and a bag of screws.

He had come at nine for the Sunday end of everything, as promised.

"Who handles your purchasing, chief?" the man said to him.

Cain looked at me.

I gave him the smallest shake of my head.

He drank some coffee.

"Because the volume discount is real," the man told Cain. "Eighteen percent over three hundred units. Tell her."

"Sir," I said.

"Sweetheart, I'm talking to the owner."

He slid the clipboard down the counter toward Cain and held out a pen.

"She's talking," Cain said.

He did not raise his voice.

I had heard him use that tone on a ballroom for fourteen months, and the ballroom had always gone quiet.

The man's face lost its color from the forehead down.

He took the clipboard back, crossed out the four, wrote a new number in the margin, and signed it.

"Forty," he said to the floor. "With the discount. I'll, ah, I'll send the rest back."

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