Ruthless Vow

Chapter Two

The Address

The loan officer said no before I finished my sentence.

His name was Mr. Bailey. He had my application in front of him and my bank statements beside it. He flipped to the second page, read it the way you read a menu you already know you can't afford, and closed the folder.

"You don't have enough credit history for a loan this time," he said. "And there's no collateral."

"I can sign a repayment plan. Ten years. Whatever works."

"That's not how this works."

"Then how does it work?"

He gave me a small smile. Patient. The kind you give someone who asked a child's question. "You need to already have the money to qualify for the money."

I sat there another five seconds. Then I picked up my folder and left.

I tried six more places before noon. A credit union on Ninth. Two online lenders took my information and never called back. A medical financing company that kept me on hold for sixteen minutes and then told me my existing medical debt disqualified me. Everywhere I went, someone was polite to me, and everywhere I went the answer was no.

By one o'clock. I was sitting on a bus bench with a sandwich I didn't eat and the papers in my lap, and I thought about the car again. Eighteen hundred if I was lucky, minus twelve hundred in repairs I never paid, which left six hundred. Six hundred out of a hundred and twenty thousand. It wouldn't change anything. It would just make me feel like I tried.

I put the papers back in my bag and went to work.

The dinner was slow. I worked the lunch shift with Marisol and counted tips in my head the way I always did, adding them up before I'd even earned them. By the time I clocked out at four, I'd made forty-six dollars. That was two bags of pretzels and a bus pass.

I got to the hospital at five. Mia was in a bad mood. She was tired, and when she was tired her heart worked harder, and when her heart worked harder she had to lie still, and she hated lying still more than she hated anything. Her sketchbook was open on her knees but she wasn't drawing. She was just staring at the page.

"Hey," I said from the door.

"Hey."

I sat on the edge of her bed. She handed me the second half of a turkey sandwich she hadn't finished. I ate it without arguing because it was easier than arguing.

"You look worse than yesterday," she said.

"Thanks."

"Where were you all morning?"

"Errands."

She looked at me a second, then looked away. She didn't ask what kind of errands. That was how I knew she already knew.

Yolanda caught me in the hallway on my way out. She was a nurse on Mia's floor, and she and Sofia had gone to nursing school together, and she'd been kind to us since the day we got there. She kept her voice low.

"You got a minute?"

"Sure."

She glanced down the hall, then looked back at me. "He called again."

"Today?"

"This morning." She folded her arms. "Same as always. Asked about you, asked about your sister. But he changed the question this time."

"What did he ask?"

Yolanda picked at the cuff of her scrubs. "He asked where your mother is buried."

The hall went quiet. A cart rolled past somewhere behind me. A door shut.

"Did you tell him?"

"I told him I didn't have that information, because I don't." She looked at me carefully. "You want me to start refusing the calls? I can shut it down."

"No." The word came out before I'd thought it through, but as soon as I said it, I knew it was right. "Don't?" Sofia knew about this. If he says anything new, tell her."

Yolanda nodded and went back down the hall. I stood there another minute before I walked out to the parking lot.

Sofia was waiting next to my car.

She held up a coffee and didn't say anything until I got close enough to take it. Vanilla, one sugar. She'd known my order since she was sixteen.

"You didn't go," she said.

"No."

"You thought about it."

"I drove past it twice. I didn't get out."

She nodded like that was the answer she expected. We stood next to my car drinking coffee while the sky went orange behind the hospital.

"Yolanda caught me on the way out," I said. "He called again. He asked where Mom is buried."

Sofia stopped drinking. She looked at me, and I could see her doing the exact same thing I was doing — lining the pieces up in a row. A man called nine days asking how Mom died, which doctors treated her, which room she was in, and now where she was buried. A man who wouldn't leave a name.

"Elena," she said slowly. "This person knew her."

"I know."

"He knew her."

"I know."

She set her coffee on the roof and folded her arms. "You still have the receipt."

I took it out of my jacket without saying anything. The address was still readable on the back. I'd been carrying it around for two days, like I might hand it back and pretend I never took it. We both knew I wasn't going to do that.

"I can't walk in there blind," I said. "If it's some kind of loan shark thing, I could end up worse off than I am now."

"Then call the number first. It's on the front. My cousin said they answer at night."

I looked at the receipt. There was a number on the front, printed small above the address, like it belonged to a different business entirely. I'd read it fifty times in the last two days.

"Give me until tomorrow," I said.

"You have twelve days," Sofia said. "Not thirteen. It's almost eight. Today is already over."

She was right. She was always right about this.

She got in her car and pulled out of the lot. I stood there another minute, then got in mine and drove home. I made it as far as my kitchen table. I sat down with the receipt flat in front of me and looked at that number until I knew it by heart.

Then I picked up my phone.

It rang four times. A woman answered. Older, I thought, from the sound of her voice. Completely calm.

"Good evening."

"Hi." My throat was dry. "I'm calling to ask about a private loan."

There was a pause on the other end. "We don't do loans."

"Then what do you do?"

"That depends on the person asking." She said it flat, like she was reading off a card. "What's your name?"

I almost hung up. I sat with my thumb over the red button for three full seconds.

Then I said it.

"Elena Marchetti."

The pause that followed was different. Longer. And in the middle of it I heard her breathing change. Just slightly. Just enough.

"Spell that for me."

"M-A-R-C-H-E-T-T-I."

Nothing. No typing. No paper. No breathing. Silence long enough that I started to wonder if the call had dropped.

"Hello?"

"I'm here." Her voice was quieter now. "Someone left that name with us. Nine days ago."

My hand tightened around the phone. "Who?"

She didn't answer that. "He said you'd call around now. He said to tell you at eight o'clock tomorrow."

"He?"

"Eight o'clock, Ms. Marchetti."

"Wait—"

The line went dead.

I sat at my kitchen table with the phone still pressed to my ear and the receipt under my other hand. Outside, a car passed my apartment and its headlights swept across the wall and were gone.

He said you'd call around now.

Somebody had given my name to a private club downtown nine days before Dr. Patterson ever said the number out loud. Before I knew it myself. And in those same nine days, somebody had been phoning the hospital asking how my mother died — which doctors treated her, which room she was in, whether the end was sudden.

Somebody knew I would end up here. Somebody knew exactly when I'd call.

Somebody had been waiting for me to walk through that door before I ever knew it existed.

Tomorrow at eight o'clock, I was going to find out who.