Small Things You Promised novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The List

At the ER Wiley tells Carlie three of his heat calls were on Lacy's charity list, Carlie finds Ty's voice in her practice files selling the list out, and Ty comes home with a $42,000 invoice and a threat.

I didn't follow the ambulance because I'm brave.

I followed it because the old man next door had nobody else.

Missy drove. I sat sideways in her lime-green hatchback with a bag of frozen peas behind my back.

"Lacy's husband," she said, for the fifth time.

"I heard him."

"Lacy has a husband. Lacy, who has Ty pick onions off her plate like a little bird."

"Drive, Missy."

The ER waiting room was full of people who looked boiled.

A man held a wet towel on his wife's neck.

A teenager slept against a vending machine with his shoes off.

A nurse took my name and said my neighbor was "being worked on," and I didn't like the word.

Missy fell asleep at eleven with her mouth open.

At eleven thirty, the doors from the ambulance bay opened, and Medic 7 brought in another stretcher.

A woman this time, gray-haired, an oxygen mask on her face.

He handed her off, signed something, and came out to the waiting room.

He looked straight at me.

He bought two packs of peanut butter crackers from the machine and sat down one seat away.

He held one out without a word.

"Is this a bribe?" I said.

"It's dinner. I haven't had any."

I took it.

Up close, he was bigger than I remembered from April.

I'd been half dead in April, so that wasn't saying much.

"Your neighbor's going to make it," he said. "His temperature was a hundred and six when we got there."

"A hundred and six."

"He had a fan going. It was blowing hot air at him like a hair dryer."

I put the cracker down on my knee.

"He's been waiting for that air conditioner since March," I said.

"I know." He turned his cracker over. "He's the third one this month."

"Third what?"

"Third heat call I've run on somebody with one of those yard signs."

He said it flatly.

His hands weren't flat. One of them was clenched on his knee.

"The lady I just brought in has one too," he said. "Dodds Avenue."

"Does Lacy know?"

He almost smiled.

"Lacy and I don't talk unless it's through a lawyer."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'm not." He finished his crackers. "I'm sorry about your kitchen. I thought about that note for a week."

"He threw it away."

"Your fiancé."

"Ex. Since lunch."

"You said." He stood up, and his radio crackled. "I'm Wiley."

"Carlie."

"I know. It was on the run sheet."

He walked back toward the bay.

Then he turned around.

"Get some sleep, Carlie. And put a thermometer in that kitchen."

"There's one on the fridge."

"Then stop reading it and do something."

The doors closed behind him.

Missy opened one eye.

"Oh, I'm in trouble," she said. "I like him."

We got home at one in the morning.

The house was still eighty-eight degrees inside.

The ring was still stuck in the floor, glinting under the stove light.

I didn't go to bed.

I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and my steno writer.

I'm a court reporter.

Every night for seven years, I've practiced speed by writing whatever is said in the room.

The TV. The radio. Ty on the phone. Ty and his buddies watching the Braves.

The software saves every practice file with the date and the minute.

I never record a sound. I just write.

Missy calls them the receipts.

I pulled up the charity's website first.

A photo of Lacy, smiling, hugging an old woman on a porch.

Thirty-one seniors sponsored since January! Installs in progress!

Thirty-one.

Then I opened three years of practice files and ran a search.

Lacy.

Four hundred and twelve hits.

I scrolled to the spring.

Thursday, May 28, 8:52 p.m.

I remembered that night. I'd been writing the news.

Ty had been on the phone at the counter behind me, eating my leftover chili out of the pot.

The words were there in plain English, the way I'd written them.

Put the list units in your daddy's duplexes, Lace. The old folks won't know the difference for a week.

I read it four times.

A week.

The old man next door had waited since March.

The front door opened.

Ty came in with an armful of flattened boxes and a roll of tape.

He'd been drinking. Not much. Enough to be cheerful about it.

"Didn't think you'd be up," he said.

"The old man next door almost died tonight."

"Yeah, Mama told me. That's awful." He set the boxes down. "He's old, babe. It happens."

I closed the laptop.

He came to the table and laid a sheet of paper in front of me.

Waddell Heating & Air letterhead.

An invoice, made out to me.

Labor and materials, 3 yrs, residential. Total due: $42,000.

"What is this?"

"Three years of work on this house."

"You never paid a dollar of rent."

"Because I did all the work on the house." He tapped the paper. "That was the deal."

"The back step is still loose. The tub still drips. The porch light has been out since Christmas."

"I've got receipts for all of it."

I almost laughed.

"Here's the thing," Ty said. "Mama's having lunch Saturday. Lacy's coming. You come, and you apologize to her for this morning, in front of everybody."

"Or?"

"Or I file this, and I put a lien on your house."

He picked up a box and smiled at me.

"It's no big deal, Carlie. Just say sorry."

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