A little voice speaks up from behind May. “What do you mean, my dad doesn’t want the responsibility?”
My heart sinks when I realize it’s Sophie uttering those horrible words. I step around May and squat down so that I can look into my daughter’s eyes. “Darling, Auntie May is just trying to calm me down when I’m acting like a silly mama. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Of course your father would love to have you at his house more often. He’s just really busy with work. But this Christmas, he’s going to take you for two whole weeks! Won’t that be exciting?”
Sophie shrugs. “Maybe. But if he has that stuck-up girlfriend with him, maybe not.”
“Girlfriend?” May’s curiosity is obviously piqued.
I stand and shake my head at her. “Don’t even ask. Just let the kids have a nice, peaceful evening without talk about girlfriends or any of that stuff.” I look at my daughter and point to the kitchen. “Go. Set the table, so Auntie May can serve you your delicious spaghetti dinner.”
May pulls me into a hug. “You’re going to be totally fine. Better than fine. You are gonna kick butt and take names, and bring all that crap back to Bourbon Street Boys so you can show them how amazing you are.”
I pull out of her embrace because it’s way too tempting to stay there and chicken out. “Thanks. I’ll call you when I’m headed home.”
She winks at me. “Excellent. I can’t wait to hear about your adventure.”
She leaves me standing in the front hallway, shouting out to the kids as she goes. “Whoever wants to be my favorite niece or nephew . . . Auntie May is really thirsty! Whoever gets her a big glass of water will be her favorite for the next two minutes!”
I hear them scrambling as I walk out the door, and it makes me smile. I may be nervous about this job I’m about to do tonight, but I would never be nervous with my sister as a substitute mom to my children.
I push away the dark thoughts that want to intrude, the ones that say if anything ever happened to me she would become that person permanently.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After I meet Lucky at the warehouse, we get into his SUV and ride over to the Blue Marine headquarters. It’s nine-thirty at night, and although we’re arriving later than we originally planned, I feel much better about being here at this time. Lucky pulls around to the back of the building and parks the vehicle in a space in the corner, far from the door we will go through.
“You ready?” He has a laptop in a bag strapped over his shoulder, and a briefcase full of files. He pauses with his hand on the door, waiting for my response.
I nod, trying to look more confident than I feel. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“That’s the spirit. Come on. Let’s bang this thing out and go have a drink.”
I don’t know about the drink part, but I’m definitely on board for getting this thing banged out. I just want to get it over with and leave. I feel weird slinking around in the dark, sneaking into someone’s business, even though I have permission to be there from one of the owners. I keep worrying that one of the other owners or an employee is going to show up and yell at me. Or worse. I stop myself from imagining what that worse thing could be.
We get out of the car and walk quietly over to the back door. The gravel in the parking lot crunches under our feet, and it sounds to me like we’re announcing to the entire neighborhood that we’re here and up to no good.
“Are you nervous?” Lucky asks. He’s talking in a regular tone of voice instead of whispering like I think he should be doing.
“Very. Does it show?” I try to giggle, to show how cool I am, but it comes out more like a cackle. It reminds me that I still need another piece of my witch costume for Halloween. I have less than a month left to prepare, and I have nothing for my get-up other than a few parts that are left over from years past.
“No, it doesn’t show. But I think it would be kind of weird if you weren’t nervous on your first night of work.”
“I think even if this were my fiftieth night of work, I’d still be nervous about sneaking into someone’s building at night.”
“Sneaking? This isn’t sneaking. We have permission to be here. See?” He holds up a set of keys and jingles them at me.
I reach up and grab them to stop them from making so much noise. “I guess I’m just worried that some random employee or one of the other owners will come by while we’re in here. What if they call the police?” I let the keys go so he can use them to open the door.
“Already got that covered.” He uses two different keys to do the unlocking.