Chapter 6

"You're going to tell me you're right," he said.

"I'm going to show you."

I had Charlene's tablet against my belly with the file already loaded to 9:20 and paused. The truck's windows were fogging at the edges. The rain had stopped Saturday night and never come back, and the air had turned hard and cold and blue.

Trent stared straight ahead at the Dumpster.

"Rennie asked me to lock up," he said.

"I know. She's on the tape asking you."

"I didn't think anything about it. I never think anything about it. She says lock up early, I lock up early, she's been running the front of the house since Dad died-"

"Watch."

I turned the tablet so he could see it and hit play.

The lane lights go down in banks. The ball returns quit. He comes across the dark floor with his keys in his hand, and he keys the front door, shoulders it, clicks it twice. The lot window goes black. Off-frame, right beside the microphone, his sister says, Lock up early. I don't want anybody wandering in. And he says, Yeah.

He watched himself do it. His hands stayed on the wheel and then they slid down to his lap and he sat there with his chin on his chest.

"I didn't know," he said.

"I know."

"She's my sister."

"I know that too."

"I'm not-" His voice broke in the middle of the sentence and he pressed the heel of his hand into his eye like he was putting out a fire. "You were on the floor. You were on the floor and I just stood there. What the hell is wrong with me."

I didn't answer that. I've learned that when Trent asks a question like that, he isn't asking.

Then he put the truck in gear and drove straight out of the lot and turned left on Fifth, and I knew where we were going, and I didn't stop him, because somebody had to be in the room when she lied.

He came back two hours later. He wouldn't look at me. He sat in the truck in the driveway for forty minutes with the engine off and the window down and didn't come in.

Wednesday night, the alley's accounts froze.

The bank on Third put a hold on both the operating account and the tax account because there was a disputed instrument on file - a sale agreement with a signature the bank's own loan officer, Marisol Vega, now wanted to see in person - and the freeze was automatic, and it locked everything.

Thursday morning, payroll bounced.

Three of them quit by ten. The fry cook, the girl who runs the lanes on weekends, and Bev, who's been doing the grill since before I married in. Bev stood in the office with her apron folded over her arm and said, "Honey, I love you, but I got a grandkid to feed," and I said I understood, and I did, and I walked her out.

At noon, Rennie changed the locks on the front doors and taped a FOR SALE sign to the inside of the window facing the street.

At 1:40, the league group got a message from the Mabry Lanes account - from Rennie's phone, but signed with the business name - that said league night was canceled until further notice. Charlene called me. Her voice was shaking and it wasn't about the bowling.

"Forty-one years," she said. "We have not missed a Thursday in forty-one years."

I sat in my kitchen with the spiral notebook open and did the numbers for the fourth time, and the numbers said the same thing they'd said the first three times: I could carry the debt. I couldn't carry the debt and the building and the baby. Something had to go.

Trent came home at six and went straight to the bedroom and shut the door.

At 7:15, I got my coat.