Page 8 of Cold as Stone
I nod, not trusting my voice.
The silence stretches, while around us, the bar continues its eternal rhythm—the murmur of conversation, the crack of pool balls, the distant hum of the air conditioning that’s been on its last legs since the Clinton administration.
“You remember that night,” I say finally, “when I was sixteen? It was pouring rain, and you called to say Mom was ready to come home.”
Devil’s hands never stop moving, polishing glasses with the kind of muscle memory that comes from thirty years behind the same bar. But I see the slight pause, the way his shoulders tense just a fraction.
“Which night? There were a lot of them.”
“The night she’d been here since noon, and when I got here, she was passed out in the back booth. You were sitting with her, just… watching over her. Making sure nobody bothered her while she slept it off.”
His eyes meet mine briefly before returning to his work. “I remember.”
“You helped me get her to the car. She was dead weight, but you acted like it was nothing. Like it was just another Tuesday night.” I take another sip, smaller this time, letting the whiskey warm me from the inside out. “You could have just let her walk herself home. Could have looked the other way. But you didn’t.”
“Wouldn’t have been right.”
“No,” I agree. “But not everyone cared about what was right.”
Devil sets down the glass he’s been polishing and really looks at me for the first time since I walked in. His eyes are the same piercing blue I remember, the kind that seem to see straight through whatever mask you’re wearing to the truth underneath.
“Your mom was good people, Kya,” he says slowly. “She was fighting demons bigger than herself, but underneath all that pain, she was good people. And you?” His voice gets even gentler, almost fond. “You were just a kid trying to take care of someone who should have been taking care of you.”
The words hit me like a sucker punch, unexpected and devastating. I have to look away, blinking back the sudden sting of tears. In all the years since I left this place, no one has ever acknowledged what those nights cost me. No one has ever recognized the weight I carried, the responsibility that should never have been mine.
“She left me everything,” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the jukebox. “The trailer, all her debts, and apparently a million dollars from a lottery ticket.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.” Devil leans against the bar, crossing his arms. “Hell of a thing.”
“Is it, though?” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “She finally got everything she always wanted—enough money to start over, to be somebody new. And she died before she could spend a dime of it.”
“Maybe,” Devil says carefully, “it wasn’t meant for her.”
I look up at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe the money was for you. Universe moves in mysterious ways.”
I snort, swirling my drink. “Yeah. Real mysterious.”
We sit in comfortable silence for a moment, both lost in our own thoughts. The bar has gotten busier while we’ve been talking—a few construction workers settling in at a corner table, some women my age sharing a pitcher and catching up on gossip. Normal Tuesday night stuff, the kind of ordinary human connection I realize I’ve been missing in my carefully curated Portland life.
“What’s your plan?” Devil asks eventually. “You sticking around, or just here long enough to tie up loose ends?”
“Not sure. I’m between jobs right now.”
I flip houses. Buy them cheap, fix them up, sell them to people with more money than taste. Turns out I’ve got a knack for breathing life back into things people think are ruined.
Not sure what that says about me, but I’m sure a therapist could make a pretty penny analyzing it.
Something shifts in Devil’s expression, becomes more thoughtful. He reaches for another glass, polishing it with the same methodical precision, but I can practically see the wheels turning in his head.
“A million gives you a nice cushion to take some time off,” he says, setting down the glass and really looking at me. “Gives you time to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life.”
“What are you getting at, Devil?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, his eyes taking in the bar around us, the scarred wooden floors, the mismatched furniture, the neon signs that have welcomed the lost and lonely for decades. When he speaks, his voice is almost hesitant.
“I’ve been thinking about retiring, Kya. Thirty years I’ve been behind this bar, and I’m tired. My joints ache when it rains, and it rains a lot more than it used to. Been thinking it might be time to hand the keys over to someone younger.”
