Chapter 14: The Dispatch Floor

By eight on Wednesday morning, the whole town had Bridget's version.

I found out at Hadley's, forty minutes into my shift.

A woman I had rung up every month for three years bought one box of nails and would not look at me.

The man who sold seed from the back counter stopped talking when I came around the corner.

At the register, a mother from Effie's pre-K class counted her change twice.

"I heard you're going to be on the news," she said, not unkindly. "Everybody says you've been after the Ketterman money for years."

"Who says?"

"Bridget called the pastor's wife at six. She was crying."

I put the receipt in her hand.

"Thank you for telling me," I said.

My boss came out of the office with his reading glasses on his forehead.

"Take the day," he said. "Go and deal with it, Bailey. The nails will wait."

I did not go home.

I drove across town to Ketterman Freight, a long gray building with forty trucks parked nose to tail in the yard.

I had been inside once, at a Christmas party, in a dress Bridget lent me.

This time I walked in alone, in my work boots, and I did not wait to be shown the way.

The dispatch floor was a big open room with a wall of screens and a coffee machine that sputtered.

Eleven drivers stood around it, with the shift change half over.

Behind the long desk sat Bridget's assistant, a young woman who had cried at Effie's second birthday.

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