shop?' She shook her head. 'No, it's this or nothing.'
'I'll still come here,' Ginny promised.
The other women chimed in quickly, agreeing.
Conversation stalled for a moment. The only noise was the snipping of Rene's scissors and the hissing of Doreen's shampoo faucet as she rinsed Kelli's hair. 'You heard about Jed, didn't you?' Maryanne said. 'Jed McGill?'
The other women -- the ones who could -- shook their heads.
'He's missing.'
'Missing?' Ginny said.
'They think he's skipped town. No one's seen him for a week, and over at Buy-and-Save they're not sure they're going to be able to meet their payroll this month.'
'What happens then?' Kelli asked.
'I don't know.'
'Buy-and-Save can't close. There's nowhere else to buy groceries.'
'Circle K.' Rene suggested.
Maryanne snorted. 'Yeah, right.'
'Well, I hope The Store hurries up with its grocery department, then.'
Doreen led Kelli across the salon to the styling chair next to Ginny. 'We have to have someplace to buy food.'
'But would you really want to get your groceries from The Store?' Ginny asked.
'We have to have someplace to buy food,' Doreen repeated.
Ginny waited a beat, but no one else answered. She thought of asking again, but she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the responses and she let the question die.
On the way home, she passed by the new park.
Twenty or thirty boys were lined up in rows on the field in front of the backstop. A table had been set up to the left of the bleachers, and a large blue banner strung between two posts behind the table read: SIGN UP NOW FOR STORE LEAGUE FAST PITCH!
She only got a quick look, but the kids all seemed to be wearing their baseball uniforms and the uniforms looked odd to her. Too dark. Vaguely militaristic. She thought they appeared out of place on boys so young. Wrong.
But then she was past the park and on the road to home and it was too late to slow down and take a longer look.
She'd have to tell Bill about the uniforms, though.
And the auto center.
And the salon.
And Jed McGill.
THIRTEEN
1
It rained for three days straight, the first major downpour of the spring.
There'd been some low clouds and light mist during the preceding months, but it had been a dry season so far, and they desperately needed precipitation.
Just not this much of it.
The storm was a bad one -- wind and lightning, not just rain -- and sometime during the middle day there was hail, the pellets of ice ripping holes in established bushes, killing Ginny's newly sprouted vegetables in the garden, and blanketing their entire property, for an hour or so, with white.
By the beginning of the third day, Monday, the hard-packed drive had devolved into mud, and a section of the road to town had been washed away.
School had been canceled, and although ordinarily the girls -- and Ginny would have been thrilled, they'd already been cooped up in the house too long and the phone call announcing the school closures seemed only to depress them.
'I'm supposed to work tonight,' Samantha said. 'How am I going to get there?'
'You're not,' Bill told her.
'I have to.'
'Explain the circumstances, trade with someone, call in sick. I don't care. You're not going in. Even the Jeep won't make it across that road in this rain.'
'I can't call in sick.'
'Yes, you can.' Bill smiled slightly. 'I used to do it all the time when I was your age.'
'But I can't.'
'Well, you have to do something, because you're not going to work tonight.'
Samantha turned to her mother, and Bill saw the look that passed between them, but he chose to ignore it rather than turn the discussion into an argument.
He walked back to his office to check his E-mail and read this morning's online news. Radio reception for anything but the Juniper station was nonexistent, and he was about to pop in an old Rick Wakeman cassette when Ginny poked her head in the door.
'Bad news. The roof in the bathroom's leaking again.'
He swiveled toward her. 'I just fixed it last fall!'
'No, you tried to fix it. Obviously, you didn't. It's leaking.'
'Shit.' He pushed himself out of the chair and followed her down the hall to the bathroom. The ceiling above the toilet was darkened by a huge water stain. At three-second intervals, droplets fell into a pan that Ginny had placed on the floor next to the toilet.
Bill shook his head. 'Couldn't it have been five inches to the left? Is that too much to ask?'
'That would be too easy. Besides, what's a leaky roof without pots and pans on the floor?' She pointed toward the wall behind the toilet. 'That's wet, too. It's seeping down into the wall.'
'I can't fix anything until the rain stops.'
'But you can put a tarp up there or something, so it won't soak through the entire house.'
Bill nodded, sighed. 'I'll go down to Richardson's and get a tarp. I'll pick up some tar and some tar paper for when the rain ends.' He turned away from the toilet. 'Goddamn, I hate doing this every year.'
'Maybe we should have the whole roof redone,' she suggested. 'Hire a real roofer.'
'We can't afford that. Not right now.' He pushed past her, walking across the hall into their bedroom, where he grabbed his wallet and keys from the top of the dresser. He put on his raincoat. 'Check for any other leaks while I'm gone.' He went back into his office, turned off the PC. 'I'll be back in a half hour or so.'
'Get enough to cover the whole roof.'
'Don't worry.'
The road was even worse than he'd expected, and he had to put the Jeep into four-wheel drive to make it through a couple of spots, but he lucked out and there was a temporary respite from the rain, then he was on pavement and heading down Granite toward the hardware store.
The only other vehicle in Richardson's small parking lot was the owner's own vehicle, parked near the side of the building. Bill pulled up directly in front of the door and ran quickly inside as another heavy downpour started. He stomped his boots on the doormat to dry them off so he wouldn't slip on the slick floor.
'Wet enough for you?' Richardson stood behind the cash register, grinning.
On the counter in front of him was a huge sack of screws and nuts that he was separating into little piles.
'Not really,' Bill said. 'But I think my roof's had about enough of it.'
He looked around. 'Where do you keep your plastic tarps?'
Richardson stared down at his screws. He cleared his throat, embarrassed.
'Can't say as I carry any tarp,' he said.
'What?'
'Well, if I could've predicted this storm, I would've ordered up a whole lot of stuff like that. But the truth of the matter is, Bill, I can't afford to stock much anymore. The Store's taking away most of my business, I'm strung
