Page 6 of Salty Pickle

The animal nibbles at the leather padding on the chair next to her.

“Matilda, no! Don’t chew the furniture.” Lucy pulls the goat close. “She’s nervous. She already ate through the strap of my shoes.” She lifts a foot and wiggles her toes.

That solves that mystery. Now for the bigger one, why she’s here.

I sit, glad the imposing desk is between us. “Can I help you?”

“I… uh.” She falters, looking around the room. “This office is nice. I saw you’re the CEO. You didn’t tell me that.”

I specifically left out work details the night we met. “How did you find me?”

“You said you worked in New York. The bartender already told us that you were part of the Pickle family. Turns out Court and Pickle together aren’t that common as names. I mean, once you knock out pickleball, the sport. It led me to your staff picture. I knew it was you.”

“You couldn’t call?”

She shuffles her feet on the rug. The goat has resumed chomping at the leather of the chair.

“I don’t have a cell phone. At least, not anymore. Not when I decided to come. My friend April—you might remember her, the one with red hair—she had the phone. But she’s gone to France.”

And Lucy has no access to one? No email? A growl forms in my throat, ready to accuse her of all sorts of things. Extortion. Playing on my sympathy, like I have any left.

“So you thought it was better to simply show up unannounced? I assume you drove, given the goat?”

Her fingers twiddle with a fold in her colorful skirt. “I, uh, don’t have a car either. Summer drove us to the Castle that weekend we met. She took off in June to Vegas with some guy named Tommy. They got married.”

“So you flew? They let the goat on the flight?” They really were getting permissive on the airlines.

“No. I rode here on a feed truck. A nice man from Ohio. That was after a trucker got me halfway here.”

I almost stand from the shock but force myself to remain planted in my chair. “You hitchhiked from Colorado?”

“It’s not hard. The goat helps. I mean, not for regular people in normal cars. They don’t want you messing up their seats. But delivery people. They like company.”

“Anything could have happened! And you’re pregnant!”

She shrugs. “It makes men less likely to get handsy. They’re squeamish.”

They shouldn’t be. She’s rosy and glowing, and I’m already flashing with everything that happened in that encounter between us in Colorado.

Time to address the elephant in her belly. “Is that why you’re here? The pregnancy?”

She notices the goat gnawing on the chair. “Oh, no!” She pulls her away. “I’ll pay for the damage. Somehow. Oh. Gosh. Oh.” Then the waterworks start.

Bloody fucking hell. She’s going to cry on me. Of course she is. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll have maintenance take it to be fixed.”

She pulls a few stalks of hay from her knapsack and holds it out, tears streaming down her cheeks. “She’s been short on foraging since we got to Queens. The subway ride was hard on her.”

“You took the subway with a goat?”

“How else would I get here?”

This whole thing is ridiculous. Who does this? It’s an episode of a TV comedy. Or a bit in a stand-up routine.

“About the pregnancy,” I remind her. “Is it your assertion that the child is mine?”

She focuses on the goat chewing through the hay. “It isyours. There was nobody before you, not for months. And nobody after.”

“I’m supposed to believe you?”

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