Page 16 of Silver Sinner

"Amy, I know complicated. Just look at my life. Come on, talk to me." Sliding a plate of eggs, overly crispy bacon, and toast toward her, I sit down across the table. "What happened?"

"They caught me stealing."

A pulse of tension moves through my chest. "What?"

"I was… I was stealing from the till, and they caught me."

The words coming out of her mouth are so alien that I can't fully comprehend what she's saying. Amy's no thief, and yet she's admitting it as casually as a customer would order lunch from me. "Okay, uhm… maybe start from the beginning."

Amy's gaze remains locked on her cup. "There's nothing to tell. I'd been doing it for a month or so, and didn't think they'd notice. A couple of days ago, Colin took me into the back and showed me the footage he'd recorded of me stealing. Nothing I could do."

I blink slowly. "What's going on? Why would you do that?" My back straightens a little. "Were they cheating you on pay again?"

"No, nothing like that." Amy lifts her cup and drinks slowly, avoiding giving me the truth, but when her cup is drained, I reach across and clasp her wrist.

"Amy. Why would you do that?"

"It's complicated, okay? When I told Drake I'd been fired, we had this huge fight and then we broke up and I didn't know what to do. We were yelling and it woke Maddie up and I was crying, and she was crying. So I just had to get out of there. Away from him."

Annoyance that they were yelling around my daughter fades amid confusion about why Amy would even resort to stealing in the first place.

"Is money tight? I thought Drake had that really cushy job at the bank."

Amy finally lifts her head and locks eyes with me. The hollowness there gives me my answer before she puts it into words.

"Drake lost his job about six months ago. He went back to dealing, but you know what that's like. The money isn't consistent and there's so much competition."

Dealing?

I immediately draw my hand back from Amy. "Drake's dealing? Dealing what, parking tickets?"

She gives me a withering glance. "No, dummy. Drugs."

Drugs.

"Are you serious?"

Amy nods casually. "He had a good thing before we met, but when we got serious and wanted to settle down, he packed it all in and got the job at the bank. But they were laying off so many people and he just got caught up in it, so he contacted one of his old dealers so we wouldn't fall behind in rent. I'd been stealing to help out more and it just caught up to me, y'know?" Tears flood her eyes. "I don't know what to do."

One tiny detail sticks in my mind, and I find myself rising to my feet while my heart races. "Drake is dealing drugs?"

"That's what I said."

"You had my daughter around a drug dealer?" Forcing my voice low to keep the conversation away from Maddie's ears does nothing to calm the fury in my voice. "Are you fucking insane?!"

Amy's eyes widen. "It's not what you think! He never had the drugs in the house or around Maddie, not ever!"

"I don't fucking care! You took care of my daughter around a drug dealer. I can't believe you, Amy. Do you know how insanely dangerous that is? Do you have any idea how fucked that is?"

"I told you," Amy hisses back. "There were no drugs near her!"

"I don't care! I trusted you, Amy. I trusted you to keep my daughter safe and away from harm while I was working. I even paid you to do that, and instead you have her around your drug-dealing boyfriend?!"

Amy's eyes narrow. "You never would have known if I didn't tell you," she points out. "And I've been doing everything I can to keep her safe, okay? Everything was fine, I swear! She never touched the stuff, he kept it locked away in the bathroom okay⁠—"

She cuts herself off when I point at her. "You just told me he never had the drugs in the house."

Her mouth opens and closes as she tries to backtrack on her lies and grasp exactly which story she's trying to spin me, but in the end it doesn't matter. I can't believe either version, and I can't get past that she had something as dangerous as drugs around my daughter.