A gentle cooing cuts into her thoughts. “Do you hear that?” Zoe asks. She cocks her head to the side as she has seen Opal do. “Mourning doves. I’m sure it’s mourning doves.”
Opal cocks her head to the side, too, alert, but the cooing has stopped. “They’re shy,” she says. “Won’t come near the feeders with the other birds, but sometimes early I will see them there. Gentlest creatures. And loyal.”
“Yes,” Zoe agrees. “I know.” She and Kyle used to feed them bread crumbs on the walk in front of their house. They came back morning after morning. The doves were the closest thing to pets they ever had.
Zoe drinks down the last of her blackberry tea. “So you think it’s the end of the season?” she asks.
“According to my berry bushes. But a few others are hanging on. Still have a few apricots on the tree. Can you believe that? September and still apricots! It’s the shade of the mulberry, I suppose.”
Kyle loves apricots, Zoe thinks. Mr. Henderson always brings over bags full of them from his tree, but it is finished up by the beginning of August. Kyle probably hasn’t had an apricot since then. Neither has she.
And Mama. Mama loves apricots, too.
“Then I guess according to your apricots it’s still summer,” Zoe says, and with the passing of a warm breeze across her arms, she thinks it must be true.
Twenty-Six
Filthy money, Murray calls it.
Dirty from so many germy hands touching it.
But as she slides soft, wrinkled bills—
thirty-four singles,
two fives,
and one,
two,
three,
four
quarters—
across the counter, the echoes of dozens of yes ma’ams, yes sirs, my pleasure ma’am, groaning arches, smiles on cue, extra mayo, no mayo, orders that beg to be confused but aren’t, anything elses, and come back agains…they follow the money like ghosts, make it more than money, and she can’t describe it as dirty because
as she lets go,
it feels amazingly clean.
“Forty-five,” the clerk says. “Here’s your receipt. We’ll send a copy to your coach so he knows you’re clear on your transportation fee.”
Another bill checked off. Accomplished. Done. Day by day.
It’s working.
It was close. After the Food Star groceries, one pack of cigarettes, and a single gallon of gas to top off the fumes she’s been driving on for two days, she only has five cents left from her Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday tips combined. But close is good enough, and the satisfaction of a paid bill spreads over her like new paint on a dingy wall. No excuses. No talk. Just done.
And no crawling back.
“Something else?” the clerk asks.
Zoe realizes she has used the clerk’s counter and time to wade through her thoughts while a line grows behind her. “No, nothing,” she says. Her victory is her own, solitary and unnoticed.
She starts to turn away and feels each elbow being caught up.