States of Grace by Mandy Miller (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

beach chairs, all coated in sand. No matter how rich you are, Mother Nature is always in charge and she treats everyone equally.

The only vehicles on the road are cops and Florida Power & Light trucks, except for one optimistic hooker trolling her turf in a too-tight miniskirt and ripped fishnet stockings. Normally I wouldn’t venture out so soon after a storm, but the endless wind and rain have jangled my nerves and have me searching for relief. A reprieve from the four walls of #7 after mowing through the two-hundred-plus pages of discovery on Zoe’s heretofore defenseless case wouldn’t be bad, either. Then again, maybe I’m riding the bus on a Sunday morning in the wake of a storm because Jake the bartender is not so hard on the eyes.

Miranda’s seated at my feet, ears pricked up as if I’ve said something to her.

“What? Those words were all in my head. No way you know what I’m thinking.”

I pull the cord above my head to signal the driver one stop before the jail complex and the Star. The walk will do my head good. Every visit up here since my release has given me nightmares. Given I’ll be spending a lot more time behind bars seeing clients, I need to inoculate myself against the debilitating fear in my gut every time I hear iron gates clanking shut.

We get off at the intersection of Powerline Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard under a bruised slate sky. The streets are deserted. The metal grates on Fancy’s Pawnshop are closed up tight. Mr. Prince, the owner, a Jehovah’s Witness, never opens on the Sabbath. Otherwise business is twenty-four seven, no matter the weather. Downed tree limbs litter the rutted sidewalks. The only people around are a couple of women smoking at the side door of Garnet Girls, a strip joint, wobbling like baby birds on skyscraper heels, their skeletal bodies trussed into black bustiers. When the back door opens and a hand beckons, they stamp out their cigarettes and disappear inside.

Miranda tripodding along at my side, I construct a mental map of the junkyards, auto body shops, and abandoned lots strewn with trash, to familiarize myself with the geography of the area, to render it less like Fallujah. All war zones freak me out, even if the only ones I see now are on TV, or in my dreams. I wonder if Miranda is equally anxious in this domestic wasteland, one also marred by violence and death, albeit one devastated by homegrown poverty and despair, not war and jihad. Probably not. The dogs with us in Fallujah thought sniffing out explosives and chasing bad guys was a game, not their job, even though the consequences for them could be fatal, a fact about which they were blissfully unaware.

I catch Oscar’s toe on a bulbous tree root that has erupted through the sidewalk and stumble forward, catching myself on a lamppost. Reflexively embarrassed, I look around, but no need. No one out here but us girls.

I stop outside the Star to free my hair from the ponytail holder, slip inside, and hop onto my stool.

“Counselor Locke, people are going to talk. If you keep coming in here, they may think it’s not the booze that keeps bringing you back.”

I feel myself blush for the first time in I have no idea how long.

“And who do we have here?” Jake asks, peering over the bar.

“This would be Miranda.”

“Of course it is. What else would a dog of yours be called?”

“I think it’s a perfect name.”

Jake circles Miranda. “Well, she is a beauty.” He freezes. “Wait, she’s got only one back leg.”

“That makes two of us. Two old war dogs. Not a good set of legs between us.”

“Can I pet her?”

“Her vest says no, but I’ll make an exception for you. She deserves a little spoiling.”

“What service?”

“Marines.”

“Semper Fi,” he says, smoothing the fur along the length of her back in one long stroke.

“What? You were a Marine?”

He slings a towel over his shoulder and slips back behind the bar. “That’s a story for another day, Counselor. But for now, what can I get you? The usual?”

“Roger that and make it a double.”

Jake wags a finger at the ease with which the words roll off my tongue.

“I still like to say that. Even if double nothing boozy is just that, nothing.”

“And I’ll get some water for the little lady, too,” he says. “Hey, quit that, would you? Thing’s unplugged,” Jake shouts to a shaggy looking guy poking at the buttons on the jukebox.

The man pulls a cigarette from behind his ear, looks at it as if he’s surprised such a thing would be there, and shuffles outside.

Jake places the keg-sized mug of Coke in front of me and waits for the espresso machine to sputter to life.

I jerk my head at the jukebox. “Who is that?”

“That would be Moose.”

He places two steaming shots of espresso in front of me and then places a water bowl on the floor by my feet. I drop both shots into the Coke one at a time and take a sip.

“What brings you up here on a Sunday?”

“Change of scenery. The walls in my tiny hole of a place are closing in on me.”

“And you came all the way up here from the beach for this?” he asks, the note of suspicion in his voice well-deserved. If I were a betting woman, one vice I’ve not acquired despite my love for playing poker, I’d wager Jake has had an unprofessional thought or two about me too, based on the fact that I’m the only customer he allows to run a tab when I don’t have cash. And I can’t deny it, he has what the French would call je ne sais quoi, what I call danger. And while I have a history of being just fine with danger—dangerous men, dangerous places, dangerous habits—Jake’s one of the good guys, and good guys don’t need a gimp with recurring nightmares and a bad