Page 12 of Midnight Dream

“Thanks for helping out today, Dustin,” I said in a breathless tone. The air around me was on fire. It was hard to breath.

“Huh,” he grunted and continued his journey to the backroom. “Anytime Dream. I’m here foryou,” he called from over my shoulder.

There was something in the way he said it, which made me think he wasn’t merely here to help me out. I shook my head to try to free myself from the mental cobwebs, flipped the sign, and inhaled deep. The spell he cast was going to make for a long day.

“I see you locked up,” I called after him. “Thank you for that too. Though, I didn’t know Jeanette showed you how to balance the registers.”

Dustin came from the back, wrapping the strings to his apron around his hips. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Dream.”

Tell me about it.

“It’s wasn’t hard to do. One thing you need to know about me. I don’t miss much and I see everything.”

I bit my lip.

“I saw you do it the other day,” he chuckled. “And your Profit and Loss statement is hanging on the wall in the back. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

“Well, thank you anyway, mister ‘I don’t miss much.’ Did you miss how to prep us for the day?”

“I— “

The bell above the door sounded, and in walked Mrs. Stevenson.

“Good morning, Mrs. Stevenson,” I said.

She brushed past me and made a beeline straight for the object of her desire. “Good morning, handsome,” she cooed.

I rolled my eyes and headed to the back, mouthing to Dustin as I passed him “keep her busy.” I had already prepped us and zeroed the registers before he came on to me last night, but his answers had me wonder.

What were you doing with my money, Dustin?

#

DREAM MOORE

Cook County Hospital was two counties over from where we were and would take me a couple of hours to get there, but once I knew the café was running, I left Dustin and drove to the hospital to visit Jake and Jeanette. I arrived around Noon and set off to find them. He was on the third floor and when I entered his room, Jeanette was there with her head down, leaning against the side of his bed. I crept in and touched her shoulder.

“Jeanie?” I whispered.

She lifted her head and rubbed her eyes. When she recognized me, she rose to her feet and I enveloped her in such an embrace, she began to sob.

“It’s okay,” I whispered in her ear, as her body shuddered against mine.

Jake hadn’t moved since I entered the room. One eye was bandaged heavily, while the other was shut. His face was swollen twice its normal size and bruised, while he wore casts on his right hand extending up his forearm, and one around his foot up to his ankle. Those were the most visible wounds. There was no telling what was going on under the blankets, and I pressed my lips tight at the thought of more damage.

After a few more sniffles, Jeanette withdrew her face from my shoulder, and dabbed at her eyelids. “Jeanie, huh? You haven’t called me that since high school.”

I nodded. In the moment, it seemed appropriate.

“He’s, uh...” she said and cast her glance to the ceiling. “He’s heavily sedated, so we can talk. He’s out like a light.”

“Oh, Jeanie,” I moaned and shook my head. “What happened? Do we know anything?”

“The cops came by to get a statement,” Jeanette said with a sniffle. She reached for some tissues in a square box on the edge of Jake’s bed. “But, they weren’t any help.”

“Figures. Were there any witnesses?”

“No one’s speaking up, Dream. No one has come forward to sayanything.”

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