“So how long has this poker night been going on?” I ask.
“Literally since I was born,” Ashleigh says, “but I wasn’t allowed to join until I was eighteen.”
“You’ve known each other that long?” I say, surprised. They’re friendly at work, but I’ve never once gotten the sense that they actually know each other.
“Since she was two feet tall,” Harvey tells me now.
“So eighth grade,” I say, and he hacks out a laugh.
“Harvey has this whole thing about ‘not showing favoritism’ at work.” Ashleigh makes finger quotes. “He even made the district manager do my job interview rather than just hiring me.”
“Wouldn’t you hate wondering whether you’d really deserved it or not?” he asks.
“Not really, no,” she says.
Harvey moves out of the hallway, so we can slide into the breakfast nook after him. “Look who decided to finally show up,” he says, “and she brought us a new fifth!”
“Trial basis only,” Ashleigh says. “We’ll see if she can hold her own. This is Daphne. Daphne, this is—”
“Lenore!” I say, shocked anew to spot tall, gangly Lenore from the asparagus stand, tucked back in the chair closest to the room’s bay window. And right beside her, the final participant in poker night, tiny and dark-haired: “Barb!”
They’re both wearing the same visors as when I met them. Both have matching cigars hanging out of their mouths. Lenore yanks hers out from between her lips as she stands to greet me. “What a nice surprise!”
Ashleigh looks between us. “You know each other?”
“We’ve met,” I say, right as Barb chimes in, “She’s our friend Miles’s new girl!”
Small towns.
“How do you know Miles?” Ashleigh asks.
Right as I say, “Oh, we’re just friends.”
Right as Harvey says, “Who the hell is Miles?” and sinks into one of the cane-backed dining chairs. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Harvey swear. Still less shocking than the Red Wings slippers.
Lenore asks Ashleigh, “How do you two know each other?”
“Daphne works with us at the library,” Ashleigh replies.
“Who’s this Miles fellow?” Harvey says.
“Miles is my roommate,” I clarify, at which Lenore and Barb exchange a knowing look.
Ashleigh slings her huge purse onto the floor and drops into the chair beside Harvey, leaving me to take the one next to Barb. Harvey plucks a cigar from a small wooden box in the center of the laminate table, then slides the box toward us.
“No, thanks,” I say. Ashleigh pops one right out, reaching for the cigar cutter in the box’s lid. “So how do all of you know each other?” I ask.
Harvey starts to shuffle. “Oh, we all go way back.”
“Grace Episcopal.” Lenore nods like, You understand.
I don’t.
“My mom was the priest there,” Ashleigh explains. “My stepmom, technically, but my dad died when I was tiny, and my mom married Adara when I was six, so she was a parent to me for basically as long as I can remember.”
A sadness flutters through the room. Harvey sets his hand atop Ashleigh’s and gives it a squeeze. “She was a good woman.”
“The best.” Lenore exhales a perfect ring of smoke toward the open bay window. “Great poker player too.”
Before I can ask—or decide if I should—Ashleigh says curtly, “Stomach cancer. Five and a half years ago.”
I think of my own mother and feel like my chest might crumple. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“It’s hard.” She cups a hand around her cigar as she lights it. “When we lost Adara, Mom really needed to be somewhere new, so she moved out to Sedona, where her sister lives. Mulder and I miss both of them a lot, but at least without Mom and Adara in the game undercutting me, I can finally take these geezers for all they’re worth.”
Lenore scoffs. “Good luck.”
“She taught me everything she knew,” Ashleigh says, hands up, cigar dangling from the corner of her mouth like a Hunter S. Thompson character. “I’m the heir apparent here.”
“Would’ve been,” Barb replies, “if you’d been the kind of kid who listens to a damn word your elders say.”
They ooh. They aah. They trash-talk. They keep accusing each other of putting off the inevitable, until finally we play the first round.
I quickly fold, nothing but a pair of twos in my hand. Harvey celebrates his winning royal flush by shuffling into the kitchen and coming back with a bottle of nice scotch. He pours a little for each of us and Barb puts a new record on.
“Round two,” Lenore says, rubbing her hands together.
By the end of the night, I’ve lost forty bucks, won eleven of it back, smoked my first cigar, and promised to go to Harvey’s seventy-fifth birthday party, which isn’t until October—three and a half months from now—but for which planning has already commenced.
