She laughed, her teeth chattering now, and Aldo felt a tear leak from the corner of his eye. He was so damn tired. He hurt so damn much. And this was only the beginning.

They clung together like that as the doctor, speaking quietly into her headset, danced over and around them, poking, prodding, taping, until landing. Aldo weakly tried to reach for Doctor Dreamy as the ground team swarmed his stretcher. “Will you call my mom, doc? Tell her what you told me. No bullshit. Give it to her straight.”

Doctor Dreamy pulled her headset off. “Yeah. I can do that.”

“She’ll probably cuss you out,” Aldo warned her. “Don’t take it personally.”

She gave him a smile. “I’ll cuss her out right back.”

“Thanks…” He drifted off as the stretcher was wheeled away from the helicopter.

23

“Thanks for getting back to me, Sheriff,” Gloria said into the phone. “I had some questions from people about security during the festival.” It was embarrassingly great to talk to law enforcement about something besides her ex-boyfriend.

Sheriff Bodett waded through her questions and provided answers that she dutifully scrawled down in her notebook. She needed to learn to type faster, Gloria decided. It would save her a lot of transcription time. She eyed the stacks of paper taking up her mother’s kitchen counter. Time and paper and kitchen real estate.

“Thanks again. I appreciate your time,” Gloria said, wrapping it up. “And if there’s anything you need from me, don’t hesitate to call.” She was getting a dozen calls a day about the festival that was still weeks away. It wasn’t exactly a social life, but she’d take it.

“Anytime, Gloria,” Sheriff Bodett said. She could hear him slurping up his soup lunch. “You’re doing a fine job.”

Gloria felt herself go pink at the praise. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

They disconnected, and as Gloria dug into her emails, her phone rang again. It took her almost twenty minutes with the town manager’s assistant to fix the issue with the parade permit. She spent another five minutes dodging pointed questions about what she’d been doing at Aldo Moretta’s house this week from Georgia Rae, the mouth of Benevolence, who’d actually shown up on the doorstep with gossip muffins.

Closing the door on Georgia Rae’s retreating figure, Gloria decided she’d earned a little break, on her day off no less, and flopped down at the counter with her mother’s laptop.

Gloria opened up the photo gallery of the one-bedroom apartment again and clicked through. It was small but cute. And she still couldn’t quite afford it. She was saving every penny for a security deposit and first and last month’s rent. In a few weeks, a few paychecks, she’d be ready to find her own place.