By the last song, the grass was full of things people had paid to throw away. A cup rolled beneath Walt's pickup and stayed there, tapping against a tire in the wind.
She had moved twice already. Walt's first choice belonged to a vendor who was not leaving. His second put the pickup in the way of a man unloading empty cases. Now she waited near the service buildings, in the space she could get rather than the one anybody wanted.
Kit stood beside her window. The radio was off her belt. She would collect another when the band finished. She had said that three times since returning from Brenda.
“You have twenty minutes,” Leah said.
Kit looked at her. “Nobody promised twenty.”
Walt came around the end of the trailer. Rosa was a few paces behind him. Neither looked hurried until they saw Kit standing by the pickup instead of near the building.
“She's still here,” Kit told him.
“We know,” he said.
“I mean she's inside. Working. Not waiting for somebody to say it's time to go.”
Walt rubbed his mouth. The band paused, and the audience filled the space with applause. In the sudden difference of noise Leah could hear a refrigerator motor running behind the nearest trailer.
“Let's do the part in front of us,” he said.
Kit moved away from the window. Leah watched the three of them cross the pavement. Walt hung back a little, letting Kit reach the door first. Rosa stood beside an ordinary rental van, the event's finance van. Its rear doors were open. A woman with a staff badge stood inside arranging an empty box. Beside her, a security guard in a dark vest held a radio and a folded list. He was not carrying the money; he was watching the people who did.
Kit said something to him. He shook his head.
She pointed toward the office. Still ordinary. An employee asking another employee something after a long day. Leah could imagine the tone without hearing it: friendly, a little weary, offering to make a task easier. The guard held the list away from her and shook his head again.
A door opened. The finance supervisor came out with both hands on a wheeled cart. Izzy held the door for her, then took the cart's side as the woman turned to lock the inner office. The bag was already loaded and sealed. Neither woman offered it to Kit. Izzy waved when she saw Kit, then looked beyond her toward the other people. The cart's front wheel struck a rough join in the pavement. She tugged it, annoyed. It jumped, banged Izzy's shin, and rolled free.
Leah's door was open before she decided to get out. An old habit: hear a wheel complain, go see what it had caught on. She stopped with one foot still in the pickup.
Kit had put her hand on the cart handle. Izzy kept hers there too.
“I can do it,” Kit said.
Leah heard that through a gap in the crowd noise. The rest came in pieces. Already told. Brenda said. No, really.
The man with the form stepped between Kit and the door.
“Your name's not on this,” he said.
“I work here.”
“I can see that. You're not doing this.”
Izzy looked embarrassed for her. “It's fine, Kit. I've got it.”
Behind the group Walt's hand went to his shirt. Leah saw it. Rosa saw it too. She stepped nearer the cart, waiting for the next thing.
Kit did not look at him. She was still trying to make the words finish the job.
“There's a loading problem,” she said to the man. “If you could give us a minute—”
“Then deal with the loading problem. I'm not changing this because someone says—”
Walt brought the gun out.
Leah stood still beside the pickup. The weapon did not change the light or the noise. A child laughed somewhere beyond the trailers. Someone near the stage shouted that they couldn't hear the announcement. The people on the lit pavement had stopped moving, but the rest of the festival had not.
The guard lowered the list. His eyes moved from Walt's face to the gun. The finance supervisor backed into the office. The woman at the van crouched behind its open door.
“No,” he said.
It was the voice of somebody refusing a workplace argument, not yet a robbery. Then he saw Rosa take the cart handle from Izzy.
“Back inside,” he told the girl.
Izzy looked at Kit.
“Go,” Kit said.
“What's happening?”
Kit reached for her arm. Izzy moved away from the hand, so small a movement that Leah might have missed it from farther off.
Walt said something to the man. Low, close. The man looked at the cash bag on the cart, then at the open rear of the rental van. He had not intended to leave it unattended. None of them had been about to leave it unattended. They were there to carry it from one occupied place to another.
“Don't make me—” Walt began.
The man moved.
Leah heard a crash against the vehicle, a metallic rattle from something loose inside it. Rosa gripped the cart as it rolled. The bag shifted against its raised edge, heavy enough to pull the cart sideways. Kit caught it before it tipped into Izzy's legs.
“Let it go,” Walt shouted.
He meant the man's hold on his wrist. For a second everyone seemed to hear their own instruction. Izzy let go of the cart. Kit stepped back. Rosa pulled, and the little front wheel jammed at the broken join again.
The man had Walt's gun arm against the side of the vehicle. He couldn't hold it there indefinitely; Walt was heavier, and the pressure on Walt's wrist had made Walt furious. The man looked toward Leah. His mouth opened.
She could get into the pickup. She could sound the horn, make enough noise for someone to look. She could go to the man and help him hold the arm. She saw all of it in the time it took Rosa to say her name.
The cash bag caught beneath the cart's handle. Rosa tried to pull it free and the whole cart lifted, threatening to tip toward Kit.
Leah crossed the pavement.
“Don't drag it,” she said.
Rosa looked at her, startled by the familiar work voice.
“Hold that side. Let it settle.”
They steadied it. Leah could see the weight hanging wrong, the metal edge that had trapped the fabric. She got the bag free by moving the load instead of fighting the wheel. Rosa took one handle. Leah took the other.
It came off the cart with an ugly little thump against her knee. She hissed, changed her grip and stayed where she was while Rosa found her balance.
Kit had put herself between Izzy and Walt. It looked protective from a distance. From here Leah could see that Izzy was trying to get past her toward the office phone.
“Don't touch me,” the girl said.
Kit stepped aside.
Walt knocked the man's hand against the edge of the vehicle. The man cried out and let go. His wrist hung wrong against his chest. Walt backed away, the gun between them, his face empty of every expression Leah had enjoyed by the lake.
“Go,” he told Rosa.
Rosa moved. Leah moved with her. The bag swung between them.
Izzy saw her properly then. The woman who had folded the stool. Kit's mother. Guest wristband still stuck around one wrist, carrying the money she'd helped someone else take.
“You too?”
Leah didn't answer. Her throat had closed. Kit turned toward the sound, and for a second all three women looked at one another across the lit pavement.
The guard was holding his damaged hand. His good one reached toward the radio on his belt. Walt saw it.
“Don't,” he said.
The man kept reaching.
A voice came from inside the building. A woman's voice, impatient, asking why the door was still open. Izzy called to her. Not Kit's name this time. Help.
Leah and Rosa carried the bag to the pickup. Leah opened the rear door with her free hand, bracing the weight against her thigh. The handle had cut a hot line across her fingers. Rosa shoved her end in. The bag scraped the seat, caught once, then slid onto the floor.
Leah straightened. Kit was still beside the door, speaking to Izzy. Leah couldn't hear the words. She could hear the girl answering, louder each time.
“Kit,” Leah called.
Her daughter looked toward the pickup. Leah pointed at the open door.
Kit turned back. Izzy had a phone in her hand now. She held it openly. Whatever Kit said next, the girl did not lower it.
“I'm sorry,” Kit said.
Izzy looked at her with an expression Leah had never seen directed at her daughter before. Not dislike. An effort to recognize her and failing.
Walt reached the pickup. He got into the front with a grunt as his leg bent. Rosa climbed in behind him. Neither asked what Kit was doing.
Leah went to the driver's seat. Her own legs seemed clumsy. She caught her boot against the sill, kicked it free, got behind the wheel.
Kit came around the pickup and opened the rear door. She kept one foot outside while she looked back at the lit building. The woman inside had come to the threshold. The man by the vehicle was speaking into his radio. The words finally carried across the pavement.
“They're taking it. Yes. Now.”
Kit pulled her foot in and shut the door.
Leah started moving. Somewhere beyond the trailers, Brenda was waiting for Kit to collect a radio.