Sugar Daddy by Rie Warren Page A

like birds’ spines over the fiddly work. Mimi motioned a gem over the thread three times until the eye captured, and she beamed victoriously, only to turn her glare in Momma’s direction.
    “I said, sit down, Letha-girl.” A hanky pressed to her lips to catch the spittle collecting at the corners. “Never did pay me no mind.”
    Momma whipped her ass to the hard plastic chair beside me, handing over the Ziploc baggy of beads she’d stolen from Mimi last time we were there. For each three necklaces Mimi made, she purloined one, collected the beads and brought them back. She was a grifting re-gifter.
    Huffing at her penny-pinching ways, I laid a paper bag on the swivel-table. Mimi hungrily emptied the loot. Cat’s eyes and crystals and turquoise and lettered beads rolled around in her hands.
    We spent the morning recounting nothing at all, and many a pleasant memory, Momma and me reaching through our own minds to keep time with Mimi’s crisscrossing remembrances.
    Nap time approached. Mimi unsteadily shook the beads into plastic pill compartments. “Shay,” she confessed, conspiratorial as a young girl, “one of these days Imma gonna make these nurses think I been swallowin’ these beads all this long time, instead of the medicines they’re always pushin’ on me. Those pills make me so tired, dawlin’.”
    I held her body to mine, careful not to agitate the osteoporosis that made her wilt like a sapling. “Love you, Mimi.” I kissed her and inhaled against her flyaway white hair. Her rose scent was redolent of the polished Avon jars arranged in the same formation on her institutional dresser as they’d been in her bedroom on McCants Drive.
    “Girl.” Veils lifted between us, and she was right there, spry and knowing. “Y’all lookin’ good. Doin’ better, aren’t ya?”
    Hiding my cheek against her, I couldn’t let go. My tears leaked to the downy folds of her neck. “Hush now, been a long time comin’.”
    She patted me and hummed, and I remembered every time we’d gone mucking about at Cove Inlet during low tide–her in pedal pushers up to her knees and a kerchief tied over hair that used to be as red as mine.
    She whispered for me only, “It’s all gonna set right for you.”
    It wasn’t until Momma dropped me home I finally topped up my phone with airtime. The messages beeped in faster than I could read. I hadn’t had this much action in forever.
    The thing went off in my hand.
    “Where’ve you been?” Reardon barked.
    “Um–”
    “Do you have any idea how close I came to cutting my trip short?”
    “Not really?”
    “You want to know what you’ve done to me for two days?”
    “Okay?”
    “I’ve sat through meetings and made pleasantries, I’ve made sure my cell was turned on, every half hour.” He was running his hand over his face and smothering his top lip with his finger, rolling back his cuffs and pacing, I pictured it all. “You told me everything about Delilah . ”
    I sucked in a breath.
    “Then I left you.”
    “Yeah.” My voice got stuck in my throat.
    “You think everyone disappears.”
    “They do.”
    “Shay, I wanted to make sure you were okay. I wanted to tell you I’m not going anywhere, even if I’m out of town.” I pictured his clenched jaw, his shoulders rolling under his shirt. “We agreed you’d take my calls.”
    “But–”
    “I don’t like this. I don’t...this wasn’t in the plan.”
    “But–”
    “Dammit, woman! I was worried about you.”
    “I didn’t mean for you to worry,” I whispered.
    His silence was loud enough to say he was scared by this.
    I held the tiny cell, waiting. I was scared too.
    He took a deep breath. “But what?”
    “What?”
    “I assume you have a good reason for your unavailability.”
    Superior Reardon was back.
    “You used all my minutes whackin’ it.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “Jerkin’ off, masturbatin’, spankin’ the monk–”
    His slight cough slowed me down. A smile was in his voice. Bet Rat