Read Online The Guilty One by Sophie Littlefield - Free Book Online

“I’m texting Norris now. He’s usually pretty good at getting back. Maybe he can meet you here after work or something.”
    â€œThanks,” Maris said once Pet was finished texting. She stood up and shouldered her purse, feeling suddenly oddly formal again. “I suppose I’d better wait for the glass guys out front. Thank you so much for helping me out today. This wasn’t . . . planned.”
    Pet shrugged, yawning. “Hey, in this life, nothing ever is, right?”

seven
    PET CAME OUT onto the porch as Maris was paying. She was signing the form on the clipboard, watching the glass repair guy out of the corner of her eye to see if he’d reacted to her name, thinking that if she was going to continue this ruse of using her maiden name she would have to get a new credit card.
    Pet watched, with her arms folded, as Maris slipped the guy a twenty-dollar bill from her purse. He’d taken only twenty minutes to replace the window. It seemed as though the job should take longer, but he worked quickly and confidently, humming to himself. Maris supposed they did a great business in Oakland. Near the school, cars were broken into sometimes in the brief interlude it took parents to pick up their children. That was the main reason the principal had offered her a space in the teachers’ parking lot, a perk she accepted guiltily. He didn’t offer it to the student volunteers from the St. Mary’s teaching program, who drove old, dented hand-me-down cars.
    Her Acura looked good as new again, with its glass replaced. The lease would soon be coming due, but Maris had treated it well and put so few miles on it. Another thing Maris would have to decide: buy this familiar car, or maybe get some little cheap import, easy on gas, another token of trading the old life for the new. But that was not a decision for today.
    â€œThey rip you off,” Pet observed. “Well, not you, but the insurance company. Whatever the company will pay, plus your deductible, that’s what they bill.”
    That wasn’t really a rip-off, Maris thought. Just the way business was done. She’d paid her hundred dollars and she didn’t care what other money exchanged hands beyond that. Already she was cherishing this new sealing off of herself, this anonymity.
    â€œNorris called. He’s on his way.” Pet smiled hopefully. “You’re still interested, right?”
    â€œYes.” Maris tried to inject a note of cheer into her voice, but the afternoon was catching up with her, stealing the bravado she’d felt earlier. The sun beat down, unrelenting even as it slid low in the sky. There was no relief in the shade. Her scalp felt greasy, her body stale.
    â€œGood, ’cause I hate to see who else he’s going to drag in here. Two renters ago? The guy was a registered sex offender. He said all it was was a public indecency thing, he was peeing out back of a bar. But I looked him up and he did something with a kid under fourteen.”
    â€œYou asked him?” Maris was both impressed and troubled by the thought. She would have feared that the question alone would provoke such a person. But then again, she realized the image that came to her mind was the shambling man from the diner. Not all sex offenders looked like what they were. Why should they? Murderers didn’t look like what they were, either.
    â€œYeah.” Pet grinned, cocked a hip. She was tough, or trying to be. “I told Norris too—Norris didn’t want any trouble, got rid of him.”
    â€œHow?” Maris knew about tenants’ rights issues from the news. It wasn’t as bad in Oakland as in the city, but it was still enough to quash the passing interest she and Jeff once had in investing in real estate—luckily, as it turned out, since the crash came almost right after. As it was, it took years for their own house—the one she had driven away from this