Page 21 of Echoes in the Storm
“What other option do we have?” my brother says with a smug tone. “You gotta get the car fixed so you can get home.”
I knew I shouldn’t have offered to do this for him. Knew I should have told him to sort his own issues out, and stuck to what’s more important—finding a job.
“If I pay for the whole thing, I haven’t got enough left to cover the motel, man.”
“They have a backpacker’s, or something?”
“They’ve barely got a main street. It’s not that big of a town.”
He huffs down the line, leaving the conversation hanging while he thinks it over. There’s no use; he can’t come up with anything I haven’t already thought of.
I shift the phone against my ear and straighten up, casing my surroundings as I wait for him to hopefully fold and offer me at least a few hundy to help with the stay. A dark green truck rattles up the road, heading out of town.
“Come on, C,” I plead as I shift my bag and myself farther off the road to avoid the truck’s backdraft. “Surely you can spare a hundred? Spot me the rest after payday next week?”
He sighs as I drop my stuff down again and look toward the truck as it passes. “I could maybe do fifty.” The car tucked behind the trailer unit comes into view.
Shit.
“Duke? Would fifty do?”
Cammie pulls off onto the grass verge.
“Whatever you can spare, bro.” I hang up on him mid-sentence, completely over any lame-arse excuse the lazy fucker is giving me, and head toward the little chatterbox emerging from her car.
“Trouble?” she calls, battling with her hair as it refuses to blow anywhere but in her face.
“Not really. I was about to head back into town.”
“Town is where I left you,” she helpfully points out. “So why are you on the outskirts?”
“Just where I ended up after I enquired at the motel up the road there.” More like, needed the chance of bumping into another “friendly” local to be zero to none.
What should have been a simple spot of shopping to get myself a change of clothes, and toiletries, ended up being a grilling.
“What’s a nice man like you doing around here?”
“A week’s a long stay. You got plans?”
“If you’d like suggestions on what to do while you’re here, come back and see me okay?”
God—they’re all so damn chipper around these parts. Probably not a big deal to anyone else, but shit, I just want some space to work things through.
“What did Archie say?” Cammie pops her hip as she stands before me, her car idling behind her. If she’s left the Beamer running, she doesn’t plan to stop for a long chat then. Good.
“That it’s fucked, which I knew he’d say, and that it’ll take a week to get the parts in, which I hoped hewouldn’tsay.”
“Damn. You checked in until it’s fixed then?”
I sigh, running a hand through my hair. Still not used to having that shit flapping about on my head in a strong breeze …
“Look, I appreciate the concern, Cam, but I’m okay. You can carry on.”
Her foot shifts backward as though she’s going to take my advice, but then she freezes, the cogs working behind her eyes. “They’ve got the A&P show this week.”
Shit.Fuck local knowledge.
“Where are you staying?” She narrows her darkened eyes on me.