Isolation Read Free

he’d come damn close to killing them both, so Liz had to feel a jolt every time she saw them. Joe was pretty sure Liz only tolerated them because Michael’s toddler grins made tiny moments of her life easier to bear. So she sucked it up and said nice things to Michael’s parents, but she couldn’t bring herself to say nice things to anybody else.
    Every day, while Liz was cooing “Who’s the cutest little black-haired boy in Micco County?” in her gravelly baritone, Joe was calculating just how much he could overtip without hearing her tell him to go to hell. And, for the last two weeks, every time he’d parked himself on one of Liz’s barstools—which was every single freaking day—he was also wondering what in the hell he was supposed to say to his father.
    He should probably have led with, “So, Dad, how long have you been out of prison? And what, exactly, did you do to get sent there?”
    Instead, he had bought the man breakfast every day, thus funding Sly’s improbable flirtation with Liz.
    â€œHow’s my favorite redheaded bombshell today?” Sly would ask in a booming voice that filled the shabby grill. Every day. He asked this every day and Joe wanted to fall through the floor every day.
    â€œShe’s ready to serve you up something hot and steamy and just the way you like it” was Liz’s invariable response. Every day, Joe wondered if it were possible to fall through a floor twice.
    Yes, Sly and Liz were about the same age. And, yes, they both possessed the cagey brains and crude senses of humor that marked them as survivors of a lot of hard years. Nevertheless, a woman with Liz’s street smarts should have looked at Sly and seen trouble on two legs. And a man with his father’s long and tough history should have looked at Liz and seen heartbreak in the flesh.
    In the movies, they would have found happiness and healing in each others’ arms. In real life? Joe had once witnessed two bears fighting for territory. The air had been full of blood, rage, and flying fur. He would expect pretty much the same results from any attempt at a romance between Liz and Sly.
    Nevertheless, Joe continued to put Sly in his john boat and take him to these early morning trysts because he couldn’t think of any better way to pass the morning. In one more week, Thanksgiving would come and go, then Sly would go home to Oklahoma. Not that Joe knew for certain that the man possessed a return plane ticket.
    Joe eased the boat alongside the dock. Once it was secured, he set Michael down to see which way he ran. When he was lucky, Michael ran away from the restaurant door, insisting on delaying breakfast long enough to watch fish and turtles gather at the end of the dock. Liz had been throwing her kitchen scraps in that spot for years, and the fish knew where free food fell from the sky.
    Joe was big on time killers these days, and this one was actually pleasant. The sun glinted off the water and the fishes’ scales, and his blood pressure always settled down when he spent a little time listening to the creaking and sighing sound of seafaring crafts safely moored.
    Michael hurried toward the spot where the fish waited for him. He burbled happily while Joe produced a slice of bread from the leather bag that always hung from his waist, full of necessities like stone tools and food. Sly, who didn’t move like a man in his late fifties, dropped to his knees beside the boy and told him about all the fish, just like he did every morning.
    â€œSee them minnows, all different shiny colors? Purty, ain’t they?” Flailing his hand at a few bigger fish floating among the multitude of minnows, he said, “Them’s pompano.”
    Yes, they were. They had been pompano every single day for two weeks now and they always would be, but Michael didn’t mind hearing about them again.
    â€œAnd over there?” The big hand flailed at a silver