A Bad Day for Sorry

polecat.”

Chrissy took one look at Stella and dropped her purse on the floor. Her hands flew up to her face, and she let out a little choked gasp.

“Oh shit, Stella, look what they done to you!”

So she was frightening people now.… Stella guessed she should be grateful that Goat had handled his horror so well.

“Just give me a mirror, will you?” she demanded, not bothering to cover her crankiness.

Chrissy nodded and blinked tears away. She picked up her purse and rummaged around in it, coming up with a plastic-handled makeup mirror, but she didn’t give it to Stella right away. Instead, she sat gingerly on the side of the bed and patted Stella gently on the top of her head and then on the shoulder, so softly it practically tickled.

“I’d hug you but I’m afraid I’d just hurt you worse,” she said miserably.

“Oh, come on, Chrissy, I’ll be fine. You and I both know—well, we know we’re tougher than people give us credit for. Right?”

Chrissy paused and mulled that over, then nodded decisively and leaned down for a big hug, smashing Stella’s tender ribs and pulling at the stitches. But Stella let her, and even tried to hug back a little.

When Chrissy finally pulled away, she handed Stella her little purse mirror. It was so small that Stella couldn’t see her whole face at once, and after squinting at herself for a few minutes, she figured that was probably a blessing.

She couldn’t get over how darn colorful she was. Two black eyes—but the flesh was actually shades of purple and gray and a sort of green, a rainbow of bruising all around the sockets. The stitches were done with neat little knots in black suture thread, and the path they traced made a sweeping curve, so it almost looked like some kind of tattoo, like the ones made to look like barbed wire that the kids were so fond of.

The shaved part of her scalp was almost a perfect square, and Stella couldn’t figure out whether that was a good thing or not. She tried pushing her hair over the patch to hide it, but the curls sprung right back the way they were, leaving the bald flesh exposed. She’d have to work at that with a little gel or something.

One thing she hadn’t noticed earlier—her bottom lip was split and swollen and stuck out all puffy, like a movie-star collagen job gone terribly wrong. Jeez.

She handed the mirror back and tried for a smile, which hurt like a bitch. “Guess I’m not going to get on American Idol anytime soon.”

Chrissy shook her head slowly. Then she took a breath and leaned in. Her eyebrows lowered and a flush of pink washed over her cheeks.

“We need to get out and get those sumbitches,” she said fiercely. “Stella, if they gonna do you like this, why, I don’t think they’re just babysitting little Tucker.”

“Oh,” Stella said. “Oh. Uh… Chrissy, see, I haven’t maybe told you every last thing I’ve found out.”

“What—what do you mean?”

“No, no, calm down,” Stella said as she saw Chrissy tense up, the tendons in her jaw standing out.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Stella, it’s my—”

“No, listen. Some of it’s, you know, maybe good news. I mean, not good but, er, not terrible.”

“Stella, you tell me and you tell me right now.” She inched over on the mattress a bit, her hip bumping painfully against Stella’s aching side.

“Well…” Where to start? With the most hopeful possibility, Stella guessed. “You know that Darla gal that called? She was talking about having something of Roy Dean’s over at her house. Wouldn’t say what it was, but the way she was carrying on, I got to thinking it might just be Tucker.”

“Tucker? She’s got my baby boy over her house?” Chrissy said, voice escalating incredulously. “What’s she done with him?”

“No, now, I didn’t say for sure he was over there, just that the way she was carrying on, saying have Roy Dean meet her there today because she didn’t want the responsibility for—um, whatever it is he left there.”

“Well shoot, let’s go!”

“But now see, the problem is, she didn’t say where she lived. Or what her last name was. I have a feeling I might have a description of her, seeing as it might be a woman somebody saw Roy Dean with the other day.”

“How do we find out?”

“Hang on, sugar, let me tell you the rest first. This Darla’s expecting Roy Dean at noon. She’s gonna get us instead. We just got to figure out where she’s at. But there’s a little more I need to tell you.”

“Like what?” Chrissy demanded.

“Well… you know how you said Pitt was visiting at your place when Roy Dean came over… and you went out in the back yard for that hibachi, and then he was gone when you got back in the house?”

“Yeah…”

“And how he thinks Tucker’s his baby and all?”

“Well sure, but like I done told you, there’s no way he’d take Tucker. He ain’t crazy that way. He’s all follow the rules and shit, he’d never—”

“Honey, I went over to his place yesterday. He wasn’t there, so I broke in. Now don’t get mad—”

“Mad? It’s a little late for mad, isn’t it, Stella? Anyway, I don’t much care what you do or who you do it to if it means we get Tucker. What-all did you see?”

“Not much, really. He sure is a neat and tidy kind of fella. There wasn’t a whole lot to look at. But I did see one thing that made me think he might have, um, taken a trip of some sort.” She told Chrissy about the cat, the huge mounded supply of food and the full water dish.

“I always hated that cat,” Chrissy wailed, as though the cat had been the one to abduct Tucker.

“Well now, we don’t know if it means anything at all,” Stella said hastily. “Maybe he just went, I don’t know, visiting a friend, or down to Branson for a few days, or something like that.”

Chrissy inhaled a big breath, let her shoulders slump, and blinked a few times. “You got any other ideas about who mighta took my boy? Any more bad news you ain’t told me yet?” she finally asked, in a subdued voice.

Only the worst news of all. Stella considered everything she’d withheld from Chrissy so far, and came to the conclusion that she’d messed up big. Keeping everything to herself had done nothing to prepare Chrissy for this moment, when she needed to hear the entire truth.

“Yes,” she said, and forced herself to look Chrissy in the eye. “These guys, the ones I think beat me up, the ones Roy Dean’s been working for… well, they’re very bad men.”

Chrissy sucked in breath. “How bad?”

Stella mulled over possible responses. Chrissy was not, as it had turned out, as dumb as Stella had first assumed. Not by a long shot. And now the girl had come within spitting distance of understanding the true dangers of the situation.

“Like… mafia bad. Drug-dealin’ bad.” Crazy stone killer bad, Stella thought, but didn’t add.

“And these guys that done this to you last night,” Chrissy demanded, “they might know where Tucker is? I mean… you think somehow they got Tucker or something?”

Stella resisted the urge to bite her busted lip and gave a little nod. “If it ain’t Darla and it ain’t Pitt that took him… then yes, I think there’s a chance they might know something, that Roy Dean might have gone to them and, I don’t know, looked for a place to stay, or, or—”

Or what? Why would Roy Dean take a baby into that mess? That was the part that made no sense at all, the part that kept Stella hopeful that answers were far more simple.

Chrissy nodded again, and Stella could tell she was thinking hard. “Did you get a good look at them?” she asked, her voice tight.

“No, dear, I’m afraid not. There was a few of them, and I was stupid. I didn’t take the precautions I should have.”

“Yeah, I’ll say. Why didn’t you tell me what you were fixing to do? Sheriff says you went over to that pond by yourself. Jiminy, Stella, I would never have let you go off on your own like that.”

“Sorry,” Stella managed. “Won’t happen again.”

“You bet your sweet petunia it won’t,” Chrissy said, and to Stella’s great surprise, she leaned over and