Page 54 of Little Shattered Dreams

“I get it,” I said.

“You getwhat?”

“You look at me and you pass judgment. You decide who I am, where I came from, what I’m like. Don’t get me wrong. I’m guilty of it too. I suppose sometimes being critical is part of my job, but not always. There’s more to me than what you see. Just because pain isn’t visible on the outside doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“I have a good family, good friends, a good life. But there is no life without death, and death is one thing I know well. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt its darkness, the weight seeping through my insides like poison. I’ve had days when the loss I felt was so unbearable, I wanted to give in.”

“Wow, that’s, uhh … deep.”

She caught my eye, and we both grinned.

“Yeah, maybe too deep,” I said. “I don’t talk about this stuff often.”

“You seem to be in a good place now.”

“I’m in a better place. The demons are still there. They’ll always be, I imagine. Maybe that’s why I’m in this line of work. Maybe bringing families closure helps to balance me out somehow—a ray of light to overcome the darkness.”

She glanced at her watch.

“Do you need to go?” I asked.

“In about five minutes.”

She’d gone from wanting to get away from me to deciding it was okay to sit a bit longer. I must have said something right.

“It’s too bad I never got the chance to talk to Quinn,” I said. “Seems like she was a nice person.”

“I thought so. You know, the comment you made about all of us who work here being in trouble with the law … I suppose you’ve researched our backgrounds. I’m not the type of person who steals. It wasn’t like I was swiping clothes and jewelry and stuff.”

“How did it start?”

“When I lost my job. I couldn’t pay rent. I got kicked out of my place and I had nowhere to go. No money. No food. I was in a grocery store one morning right after it opened, staring at all the pastries they’d just put out, and … I don’t know. I couldn’t resist. And I didn’t get caught, which made it easier to do it again. And again.”

“I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just doing my best to leave it all behind. Thanks to Grace giving me a job here, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have a family.”

“You’re referring to your co-workers?” I asked.

“Yeah, well, most of them.”

“Are there some you get along with more than others?”

“It’s just like any other job. It’s impossible to get along with everyone all the time.”

It seemed like she was referring to a specific person.

I wondered who.

“What do you know about the crimes of your fellow employees?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t call being caught selling weed a crime.”

“I didn’t know Tyler sold it. He seems like a gentle person. A bit on the shy side.”

She tilted her head this way and that, weighing the comment. “Tyler’s not shy once you get to know him.”

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