I’d told Mike I’d work an extra shift if he needed me—it was starting to get busy now that it was the middle of May and the tourists were coming—but he gave me hell, told me I needed a life. We both knew that since I left the halfway house, the restaurant was my life. I’d be forever grateful to him for giving me my job back. Sure, I had to work in the kitchen now, not up front where the diners could whisper and speculate about the woman who had killed her sister. But I preferred the noise of the kitchen anyway. Besides, a job was a job and when you have a record like mine, work was pretty hard to come by. Captain, my gray-brindle pit bull, was still in my bed. The lazy-ass would sleep all morning if I let him, but I didn’t care. He was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. Since I moved back I’d been helping at the shelter, walking the dogs. The shelter staff was glad for the assistance—they didn’t give a crap about my past. The manager, Stephanie, was a tough broad, somewhere in her late forties, lots of tattoos and piercings.
