The Shoes She Served In

“Tell me what happened,” I said finally. “Just tell it the way it happened. You’re not in trouble, and I’m not mad at you. I need to know.”

So she told me, and I am going to tell it the way she told it, because I have gone over it so many times since that I could tell it in my sleep.

Alexa Ware was thirty-three. She had been with Brett about a year and had moved into his house in the fall.

She worked at a dental office in town and she was, most days, perfectly pleasant to June.

I had met her maybe six times. She was always polite to me in that careful way, and I was polite back.

I had no complaint about her that I could have put into words before that Saturday.

That weekend Alexa’s folks were opening up their place on the lake, west toward Chamberlain, for her dad’s sixtieth birthday.

Her whole family would be there. She had been planning it for a month.

She wanted June to come. She had told Brett, and Brett had told June, and June had told both of them back in February that she had a tournament that Saturday and could not go.

Brett said fine. He would work his Saturday run, Alexa would drive June to check-in on her way out of town, and he would drive out to the lake Saturday night after he got off.

That was the plan everybody agreed on, as far as June knew.

But Saturday morning, June came downstairs at quarter after six in her jersey and her sweats with her bag over her shoulder, and Alexa was at the counter with the cooler open, and she asked again.

“Last chance,” Alexa said. “My mom’s making her cake. My sisters are bringing the kids. We’d all really like you there. You can play volleyball any weekend.”

June said she was sorry, she really was, but this was the regional, and Coach had told her she was serving first, and she could not miss it.

“Your mother put you up to this,” Alexa said. June told me she said it quiet, not yelling, which somehow made it worse. “Every time it’s something. You don’t even try with me.”

June did not know what to say to that, so she said she would go to the lake next time, and she set her bag down by the stairs and went to get her water bottle filled at the sink.

Alexa told her to go wait on the porch, that she would bring the car around. June thought that was strange, because the car was in the driveway, but she went.

She sat on the step. She heard the garage door. She heard the car start.

Then Alexa came around the side of the house with the cooler and her overnight bag and pulled the front door shut behind her, and June heard the lock.

“Call your mother,” Alexa said, walking past her down the steps. “She’s the one you picked.”