by A. J. Downey
“Ask you something?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Sure.”
“Where’s your pops?”
He frowned. “Died.” He said it flatly, and there wasn’t a trace of hurt on the kid's face, but there sure was a whole lotta anger.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said automatically. “My condolences.”
He shook his head.
“Save ‘em. He was a douche,” he said, and I nodded.
“Okay.”
“So, anything else we should know about?” he asked, changing the subject flatly.
“A few things,” I said. “But those are all upstairs and I best take them up with your mom if she asks. Be happy to go through that report with her page by page if she’d like.”
Marc frowned.
“You know about that?”
I chuckled. “Holly and I have been doing business for a good bit of years now. She knows I’m honest and it wouldn’t look good on my business to cheat anyone. A lot of that stuff? Superficial. Some of it, though? It should be addressed, even if it’s not immediately.”
Marc studied my face for a second and finally nodded. I filed it away as interesting. He clearly had some trust issues, which, didn’t we all? Still, interesting.
“Come on, let’s head on back upstairs.”
“Okay.”
He turned and I followed him up, catching Mace’s eye, who mouthed what the fuck? at me. I frowned and shook my head and waved him off.
He knew I didn’t really like kids – which was true – I didn’t like kids, as in little kids. Marc wasn’t little and so far, he seemed alright.
When we got back upstairs, it was to an unwelcome surprise.
“Aren’t you done yet?”
I frowned slightly, and Holly, who was standing on the other side of the counter in the dining room, looked helpless and at a loss for words.
Hillary McConnel, the current homeowner and seller, was standing in the kitchen. Cadence had evaporated. I frowned slightly.
“We aren’t slated to be done for another few days yet,” I told her. “I do believe that’s laid out in the contract you signed.”
Just like it was laid out that we didn’t get paid until after the house was closed on, which was a big fuckin’ favor where this bitch was concerned. I was already doing this shit at bargain-basement prices as a favor to Holly. This bitch, Hillary, could go fuck herself. She was constantly up our asses, getting these fucking ideas in her head and trying to foul up and change deals to suit her better mid-fuckin’-stream.
She was a royal pain in the fucking ass, thought she was better than she actually was, and could best be described as a white-trash princess. I meant what I said. From her ugly fucking little dog to her pink Juicy Couture velvet tracksuit that was probably the only one she owned or could afford. It was so old some of the fuzz was getting rubbed off in places.
Bleached-blond-Karen hair completed her look right along with a few trashy tattoos that look like she went for a chic-upscale look with a dollar-store artist.
Needless to say, I couldn’t stand the bitch. I had no idea where Cadence was, but I was glad she wasn’t here right this second.
“Who are you?” she demanded of Marc.
“Uh…”
“Marc is Ms. Mitchell’s son,” Holly said carefully. Marc just kind of looked nervous and waved.
“Oh, so she is here?”
Fucking bitch. She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew Cadence didn’t want to see her, but fuck what anybody else wanted. It was all about Hillary, all the fuckin’ time.
“Yes.” Holly made eye contact with me and tilted her head back ever so slightly in the direction of the front door through the archway behind her. My phone did me a solid and chimed in my pocket at just that moment.
“Excuse me, ladies, for just a second,” I said, and went for the front door. Marc stayed back with Holly, which was good. I checked the notification – an app I didn’t care about – and I opened the front door and went out onto the front porch.
Cadence startled and turned to look at me, tears wetting her cheeks.
“Oh! Um…” She turned away and tried to wipe them away, but they just seemed to want to fall faster.
I have to say, my curiosity was piqued.
“You alright?” I asked, leaning on the railing overlooking the narrow patch of front yard.
She shook her head and sucked in a deep breath and held it, trying to get it together.
“It’s just a lot,” she said, finally letting it out in an explosion.
“Talk to me,” I said gently, hoping that to her ears it sounded inviting.
I couldn’t tell you how much I wanted to know more about her.
3
Cadence…
We’d been through so much – Marc and I – and I was trying to be strong for the both of us, but I just felt like falling apart. I was under so much stress, so much strain, and when Holly had rushed up to me and told me to go out front, that Hillary McConnel was coming in through the back, it was everything I could do to suppress the sudden wildfire inferno of rage tearing through my breasts.
I went out onto the narrow front porch, leaned against the railing, and just tried to breathe for a minute.
It was pleasant out here, at least. Cold, but clear. The sun shining, a nice breeze rolling through the trees along the idyllic little street. The neighborhood wasn’t the best now that I saw it in person. It was certainly a far cry from the affluent neighborhood Marc and I had come from in Georgia. A definite step down, but then again, the house prices here in the Pacific Northwest were insane and I was lucky to get this home for what I did. God, but didn’t it figure that buying this place would be more difficult than anything else thus far?
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I took several deep breaths and tried to get a handle on myself before I started crying and just couldn’t stop.
I leaned harder onto the porch railing and sniffed, trying not to buckle under the weight and sadness, the stress, when the front door to my – well, my soon-to-be house, opened. I turned expecting my son or Holly, but it was the contractor, instead.
“Oh! Um…” I straightened, startled, and turned away, wiping the tears from under my eyes.
“You alright?” he asked, crossing his arms over a very nice chest and leaning his jeans-clad hip against the railing.
I shook my head to dispel the thoughts about just how attractive Jared Ronald Allen Smith was and let out my breath in a whoosh.
“It’s just a lot,” I said.
“Talk to me,” he said gently, and I paused for a moment, the invitation a siren’s call of sorts. I closed my eyes and looked away from those intense, hazel eyes – the mix of brown and green, earthy and vivid but the look in them... I don’t know what to say about that. It held an edge of predator, but also an edge of something like protection. The intensity with which he looked at me left me wanting to spill all my secrets but stole the words from my lips.
I couldn’t tell you how much I wanted to unburden my soul, but this was not the time, nor the place. Nor was this poor man the one I needed to dump on, either.
I finally pressed my lips together miserably and shook my head lightly.
“Thank you, um, that wouldn’t be right or a good idea, I don’t think,” I stammered and was saved from my own awkwardness by the door opening once more and my son poking his head out.
“Mom, you okay?” he asked, and I did what I always did.
I put on a brave face, smiled brightly, and said, “Yeah, honey. What’s up?”
He stepped out and closed the door.
“Holly’s doing her best to fend off the cuntasaurus rex in there. She wanted me to give you these.” He held out keys on a ring to me, and I frowned, temporarily forgetting to tell my son to watch his language.
“What are these?” I asked.
“The keys to the house. She says this one is the storage door out back and that one or both of these open the front or ba
ck door, she doesn’t know which.”
“Oh, God,” I groaned. “I’m sorry, baby, you shouldn’t have had to deal with any of that. I—”
“Mom, it’s okay,” Marc said, putting up his hands to ward off my babbling. “I’m a big kid, now,” he said with a laugh. “She’s awful, but she doesn’t bother me the way she bothers you.”
“You’re iron clad, kid. She bothers everyone.”
I shot a smile past my boy at Jared and said, “More like Teflon. Nothing sticks to my boy.”
“Okay, so she came just for that?” I asked, and Marc rolled his eyes.
“No, she’s got a bunch of her shit in the storage out back,” he said, wincing and rubbing the inside corner of his eye. It was one of my son’s tells. Unlike his father, he had a terrible poker face. Likely he got it from me. I was awful at lying, but that wasn’t what this was. This was Marc, cringing at having to tell me something he knew I wouldn’t like to hear.
I closed my eyes, let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, and felt my shoulders drop in defeat.
“How much stuff?” I asked.
“A lot. Most of it’s garbage and stuff and I think she’s planning on sticking us with it.”
“Goddamnit,” I uttered in frustration.
“Let her,” Jared spoke up, and I jumped slightly. I had gotten so focused on Marc, and I was so tired, I had truthfully forgotten he was standing there.
“I’m sorry?”
“Let her,” Jared repeated with a shrug. “I’ll get it out of there for you. It’s not worth the headache and it won’t take much. Just let her haul out what she will, and I’ll handle the rest when the job’s done.”
“You mean it?” I asked, holding out hope that just one thing in this whole process was about to be easy because nothing else about it had been.
“Yeah, but I need you to do something for me,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He pushed off the railing with his hip and put his arms down to his sides, stepping into a little circle with me and my son, pitching his voice low.
“Either tonight before you get back to wherever you’re staying or tomorrow right after you close and before you head this way, I need you to stop at a hardware store and pick up new lock sets for the front door, back security door, back door, and the storage door. Do yourself a favor and get ones all keyed the same. Both knobs and dead bolts. I’ll put them in for you.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked, then realized it sounded rude. I stuttered, correcting myself and said, “I mean, why would I do that?”
“Because this bitch is crazy, and I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her skank ass.”
Marc sputtered a laugh, and I gave him a sharp look.
“Okay, she’s a pain, I admit that, but there’s no need to call names,” I corrected my boy for laughing. Jared’s lips quirked into a half-smile at me as his eyes roved my face.
“Point taken,” he said. I blushed furiously and was grateful he didn’t seem offended for what I had intended to be for my son, but apparently caught him, too.
“Oh, oh no! You’re an adult, you can say whatever you’d like. My son, however, I would like to instill a little better than that in him.”
“It’s okay, Mom. No reflection on you. Let’s call it Dad’s genes.”
I bit my lips together, closed my eyes, and drew in a long slow breath in through my nose and let it out through my mouth.
The door opened again, and I jumped. Holly poked her blond head out and looked apologetic.
“Coast is clear,” she said.
“Did she leave a mess in my storage unit?” I asked.
Holly winced. “Afraid so.”
I sighed.
“Perfect,” I muttered. “Just perfect.”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Jared said, reaching out and pinching my jacket sleeve, giving it a gentle shake. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“I appreciate that, thank you,” I said. “But you shouldn’t have to.”
It was the principle of the thing.
4
Glass Jaw…
“Heyyy – oh shit, what’s wrong?” Marc held out a couple of bags from the hardware store, looking grim. I took them from him.
“Movers dicked us over,” he said unhappily.
I looked past him up the driveway where Cadence was parked. She was on the phone, tears streaming down her face, her makeup running, her fingers under her nose, hand pressed to her lips as she tried to maintain her cool with her phone pressed to her ear.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Our stuff is still back in Savannah,” he said unhappily. “It was supposed to be delivered today. We left over ten days ago – got here in six. They lied to my mom and now they’re saying it won’t be here until like the end of the month.”
“Okay, hang on a minute here.” I thrust the bag of lock sets into his hands and muttered, “Take these to Mace for me.”
“Whose Mace?” he called at my back as I marched across the grass to Cadence’s SUV with its little U-Haul trailer. I don’t know what she’d brought, but at least she wouldn’t be without nothing.
I opened the car door and could hear the guy on the other end of the phone screaming at her in a thick Boston accent.
“You callin’ me a liar, you two-bit fuckin’ cunt?”
I snatched the phone right out of her hand. “Who is this?” I demanded to a “fuck you” and the phone clattering on the other end. The call severed and the line went dead.
Cadence had both hands shoved over her mouth and was sobbing uncontrollably.
“Hey, come on now.” I kneeled in her open car doorway and put a hand on the back of her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Don’t waste any tears on that piece of shit.”
She crumbled and lost her shit even harder, gripping the steering wheel of her car with both hands, breath sawing in and out of her chest too fast.
I switched tactics immediately.
“Breathe, honey. Just breathe,” I said. Making eye contact with her, I mimed breathing in and breathing out slow and steady until she caught on and started doing it too.
“Right, that’s right.” I nodded. “That’s good.”
Holly’s words from the day before came back to me – about this woman going through so much and how beautiful she was inside – I wanted to know. I’d seen her on the front porch yesterday afternoon. She sparked fire like an opal in the sun. She was tough. I could see it in her, so what the fuck had happened to bring her this low?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be,” I chided. “Just breathe. Take your time.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she half-wailed. “I don’t have all the answers this time.”
“Just take your time, honey. Just take your time, get it together, and we’ll go from there. Okay?”
She stared at me, mascara running down her cheeks in muddy tracks, and nodded.
I think she was out of strength. It was the end of the line. I was half glad she’d landed in my lap – I had plenty of strength to spare. I would get this figured out.
Her phone rang in my hand, and I looked. Movers was emblazoned on her screen. I swallowed hard and had a bit of grim resolve settle in my chest before answering her phone with a warning look at her to stay in her car.
“Hello?”
“Who’s this?” a guy with a decided middle-American accent asked. “I thought I was calling Cadence Mitchell.”
“You are. This is her phone, but you got me.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
About to be your worst fucking nightmare, if you don’t answer my questions, I thought.
“This is Jared Smith. I’m working on Ms. Mitchell’s new house. She’s a little upset right now. Maybe you and I can sort things out, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” He sounded a little relieved.
Fuckin’ idiot.
; “How you doing?” I asked and slid up onto the second stool at her kitchen bar on her dining room side.
She took a sip from the coffee I had one of my guys run out and get us. Her face was freshly scrubbed, her long, wavy, brown hair pulled up into a high ponytail. Her face was stark, her eyes red rimmed from crying.
“Better, thank you.”
“Okay, good. That’s good.” I nodded.
She sniffed. “So did you get anywhere with them?” she asked.
I sighed heavily. “Not yet, but I think I got this shit figured out. You aren’t the first person they’ve done this kind of shit to. I’ve seen it before,” I said. Which was true, I had.
“What’s going on?” she asked weakly.
“Well, one, the Southie piece of shit that had the gall to talk that way to you on the phone says he’s sorry.” She gave me a look, her facial expression dropping her green eyes, clearly stating without saying a word to drop the fucking bullshit with her. I smiled and laughed a little. “Fair enough,” I said.
“So, what’s going on?” she repeated, and I sighed.
“According to these assholes, the contract you signed states they have twenty-one business days to deliver your things to you from the date of when it was initially supposed to be delivered which is…?” I asked.
“That was supposed to be today,” she said, sniffing, her voice cracking slightly.
“Okay.” I nodded. “So, we look at a calendar, take out every Saturday and Sunday that means…” I clicked my tongue. “Friday, the second of next month.”
She closed her eyes, her face dropping and her shoulders settling under the weight of defeat that landed on them like a ton of bricks.
“Next month?” she asked weakly.
“Not necessarily. They could bring it any time between now and the second without being in breach of contract. What it means, really, is that you can’t do anything about it until after the second of next month. Meaning, you can’t sue them, or anything like that.”
She nodded morosely.
“What have you got in your car and trailer?” I asked.
“Um, boxes of important papers, clothes, uh… artwork and some odds and ends. They said they would have everything here today, so they have everything – our furniture, our beds, our kitchen stuff. I don’t know what I’m going to do!”