Page 7 of Clean Sweep
“Tanner? Oh, Tanner, I’m so sorry. I totally forgot.”
“Forgot?”
“To call and let you know. Wesley and I eloped last night!”
Theclunkof my jaw hitting the floor was my only response. For five seconds straight, I fumbled to form a reply. Yessica and Wesley had been engaged for two years now. She was in a constant state of wedding planning, because the date had been squirrely. Twice we’d passed the day she wassupposedto get married. In hindsight, elopement wasn’t a massive stretch.
But it still shocked me.
Wesley sang something in the background in a tone horribly off key. Knowing him, he did it on purpose. Then he laughed in a loose, half-drunk kind of way.
“Eloped?” I managed.
“Yes, I’m sorry.” Regret stained her tone, at least. “I thought I’d covered everything that would need to be taken care of as we packed, but I forgot to request the time off. Please don’t be mad.”
“When will you be back?”
“Next week?”
My nostrils flared. “Next week? Yessica! We have eight houses booked in the seven days you’ll be gone. What am I supposed to do?”
“I’m sorry!” she cried again. “Wesley found these red-eye tickets for a steal and then a Groupon for a resort place. I couldn’t turn the offer down!”
A cheap flight and a Groupon for a resort. Next thing I knew, she’d be telling me their wedding dinner had a buffet.
“And the food here is wild,” she continued. “Wesley can’t stay away from the buffet.”
I metaphorically threw my hands in the air. Sometimes, my fifty years of wisdom was almost obnoxious.
“Fine. Is this a resignation or just a huge mistake on your part? Because this is a big deal, Yessica.”
“I know, Tanner, and I’m sorry.Reallysorry. Just take it as a resignation, because I really don’t know when we’ll be back. Maybe we can talk when I get there, but I gotta go! The ice cream truck is swinging back by and we just scrounged enough coins from the sidewalk to share one. All the cleaning stuff is in the truck, organized the way you like it. Good luck!”
The call ended.
I set the phone down in my console and stared out the window, jaw tight. Is this what utter shock felt like? I’d lost my only rockstar employee over a cheap buffet and a kiddie ice cream cone bought with money found in the sidewalk cracks.
With a muttered swear word, I shoved my phone into my pocket and cranked the work truck back on.
Looks like I had a house to clean.
THE PHYSICAL RELEASEI would experience while cleaning Leslie Miller’s house all by myself didn’t ease the frustration of losing Yessica. I wanted to punch something, but I’d make do with rampant organization.
While my mind spun through how I’d get a job advertisement out, I navigated through Pineville. Pineville had something like 200 residents in the town proper. More were in the outskirts, but they hardly counted.
It was easy to know exactly where everyone lived, even though I didn’t live here. Ten years as an assistant basketball coach and algebra teacher at the high school had given me intimate knowledge of the area. I’d left that job five years ago to start the cleaning company, but relationships lingered in the meantime.
Every school day, Celeste and I got ready early in the morning, drove down the canyon, and I dropped her off at the high school. We lived too far into the mountains for a bus to come far enough anyway. If she did hook up with a closer school bus, she’d be riding for almost two hours. In the spring when there wasn’t snow and ice on the ground, I let Celeste drive herself.
A bit too protective, maybe, but I accepted that fault.
My trucks had a lot of miles on them, but it didn’t matter. Celeste would graduate next spring and all of this weird routine would disappear forever. The time I had her in the car with me, one-on-one, made all of it worth it.
While Celeste went to school, I stayed in Pineville to work on odd jobs the company received, make phone calls, prospect clients, or to help Yessica.
Sometimes, I drove back to Jackson City to work from our home office there. We had a sister cleaning company in Jackson City that I also owned. If I didn’t make it back to Pineville to pick up Celeste right after school, she hung out at the Frolicking Moose coffee shop to wait. Which is exactly why I knew Leslie Miller.
Because Celeste wasobsessedwith her.
