“Couldn’t be better,” Molly said.
She frowned. Did she have to start with an out-and-out lie? What was wrong with her?
“You’ve been pretty quiet since you said you lost your job at Crabby’s.”
“I didn’t say I lost my job.” Molly bristled.
This is why she started with a lie. Her family always walked on the dark side.
“You didn’t?”
“No. Not at all. The restaurant closed. That’s very different.”
“Except for the money part. The money part is exactly the same.”
“Whatever,” Molly snorted.
She hated when she resorted to “whatever.”
“So what’s up with you now?” Curly asked.
“Oh, lots,” Molly said. “I’m moving to a…a different place…and I got a new job. It’s really fun. I’m outside all day and we never work past dark.”
“Wow! That is lots!”
Her brother sounded so happy for her. She could feel herself warming to their conversation. She knew her brother wouldn’t exactly judge her if she told him the truth, but he never seemed to have a misstep, and her life was one blunder after another. How could she tell him she was about to be homeless and had no idea how much money she was going to make?
She prayed he’d change the subject.
“How is the tree house going?”
“It’s good,” Molly said. “Working at the tree farm has given me new inspiration.”
“Don’t get distracted and start making all kinds of changes,” Curly counseled. “You know how you get.”
“How do I get?”
She stared at the model with the new transparent safety rail and larger windows, avoiding even looking at the new addition sketched out on the notepad.
“You get distracted and then don’t follow through,” Curly said.
“You sound like Mom.”
“Yeah. So? You sound like Dad, always living in a dream world.”
Ever since they were kids, sibling arguments usually dissolved into the two of them hurling insulting comparisons to their parents.
“Whatever,” Molly said. “How are things with you?”
“Great.”
Of course they were.
“Got a promotion at work,” he said.
“That’s good,” she said.
Molly felt a slight tingling in her stomach. Maybe he had money to burn. Maybe she could tell him she was in dire straits.
“Yeah,” he said. “Bought a little condo. Finally. Of course, I don’t have a red cent left, but I’m in the game, you know?”
Molly didn’t know. She was so far from the game she couldn’t even see the players.
“Congratulations,” Molly said. “I’m happy for you.”
She tried to tamp down any less-than-kind feelings. “Envy,” “resentment,” and “bitter” were not words she wanted to associate with. It wasn’t Curly’s fault nothing ever went wrong in his life.
“Do you want to talk to Galileo?” Molly asked.
“Sure,” Curly laughed. “Put me on speaker.”
Molly tapped the speaker icon and walked over to the African Grey’s cage.
“Say hi to Curly,” Molly said, holding up the phone.
“Bite me!” Galileo said.
Curly imitated a rooster. Galileo cocked his head, then repeated the sound. Curly cheeped like a tiny chick, and Galileo responded in kind. Curly barked like a dog.
Galileo looked at Molly.
“Oh, he wants a reward,” Molly said, handing Galileo a sunflower seed.
“Diva,” Curly said.
Molly quickly tapped the speaker off. The last thing she needed was for Galileo to start a stream of profanity the neighbors might hear.
“Okay, gotta go,” Curly said.
“Thanks for calling,” Molly said.
“Look Mols… I know you’re getting your master’s and you’re pretty much stuck there in Kentucky…”
“I’m not stuck in Kentucky!” Molly said hotly.
“That’s not what I meant. All I’m saying is, you’re welcome to come home anytime. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Whatever,” Curly said—and hung up.
Whoever got in the last “whatever” won.
Molly put the phone down. She sat on the couch, hugging her knees. She thought about the conversation with her brother. As much as she hated to admit it, she knew Professor Cambridge wasn’t big on changes to an approved design (not that he ever really approved of her design to begin with). She pictured his sour face as she presented her new ideas. But she knew in her bones she was on the right path. She hadn’t felt confident in her design for months, and it felt good to be back on track.
She picked up her notepad as she mentally switched gears. She flipped to a clean page and started to map out the floor plan of Crabby’s. She was surprised to find, even though she’d worked there for years, she couldn’t visualize every inch of the place. She’d seen enough movies to know you had to have a map of the place down cold before you broke in.
Not that she was breaking in.
She had a key.
She set her phone alarm for pre-dawn. She chose the “Chicken Dance” as her wake-up music. Turning the volume to high, she returned the phone to its charger out in the living room. She knew from experience that having to get out of bed and turn off the “Chicken Dance” was less painful than trying to ignore it and get a few more seconds of sleep.
Molly thought she had just closed her eyes when the “Chicken Dance” started playing. She vaulted from the bed and ran to the phone, panting as she shut it off. She and Galileo stared at each other, Molly daring him to burst into song.
She won.
She quickly brushed her teeth, brushed her hair into a ponytail, threw on a baseball cap, dressed in dark clothes, fed Galileo, and tiptoed to the door. As she closed it, she heard Galileo start to sing.
It was the “Chicken Dance” melody, of course.
“Bite me,” she whispered hoarsely as she locked the door behind her.
She’d have that song in her head all day!
Molly made her way to her car, unlocked it, and slid behind the wheel. She’d taken the car’s behavior as an indicator of the day ahead. Car starts, good day. Car coughs and dies, bad day. Her car started.
She made her way through the darkened street to Crabby’s. She looked right and left, making sure she had the road to herself. She realized she’d made this trip in the dark every time she opened the restaurant for breakfast, but it had never sent her pulse racing as it did now.
Just pretend you are on your way to Crabby’s like it’s any other day.
This bending reality was new for her. It wasn’t really encouraged in civil engineering. She wondered if she should have chosen theater arts as a major instead.
Parking around back, Molly let herself into Crabby’s office. She wanted to make sure she had electricity, so she snapped the light on and quickly off again. The office had a long wall of windows, but they faced the river, so she felt she was pretty safe with a momentary flicker. She closed the curtains and quickly opened them again. What if someone noticed the difference? She used her phone’s flashlight to look around. She knew the office pretty well, but she was certainly looking at it with a new objective. She wanted to stay as hidden as possible. Even though it had a perfectly serviceable couch, she was worried that the windows would present a problem. Anyone strolling down the footpath by the river could see into that room.
Maybe she could crawl onto the couch after dark? She should have a plan B just in case.
She walked through the dining room, kitchen, walk-in refrigerator and freezer, garage, and storage areas.
The storage area had no windows. She found a nook around a corner in
the storage area. You’d have to be exploring the entire place before you’d look here! It would be the perfect place to hide her stuff—Galileo and herself. If she found she didn’t have the nerve to use the couch, she had an unopened, inflatable pool float she could use for sleeping.
She locked the door and returned to her apartment, full of purpose. She rummaged through the hall closet, looking for the pool float. The only reason she’d purchased it was that it had a large parrot on it, and she couldn’t resist.
She wondered if Galileo would be unhappy in a dark storage area for…she didn’t know how long. Could she move him into a hidden but more light-filled area of the place during the day?
What if someone heard him?
The calmness that had settled over her started to slip away. She’d have to play it by ear, she decided. One of the few good things about having a talking pet was that he would not hesitate to announce his dissatisfaction.
She heard Galileo moving back and forth on his perch.
“Have I been ignoring you?” Molly asked.
“Bite me,” the African Grey said.
Molly stretched and walked over to the cage. She held out a sunflower seed. He took it in his toes and swiftly cracked the hull with his beak. While he was busy munching, Molly looked at the cage in dismay. How was she going to get this monster cage out of the apartment and into Crabby’s? She couldn’t ask anyone she knew to help or her secret would be out. Galileo didn’t really need his fancy cage—he spent most of his time with the door open, hanging out on the perch. For an ornery bird, he really was well trained about staying where he was supposed to be. She knew he’d be fine with downsizing, but she was sure he liked the aesthetics of the cage as much as she did.
One drama at a time, she told herself.
She went to the parking area and picked up several boxes. Returning to her apartment, she passed several neighbors. The boxes raised eyebrows and there were lots of questions. Molly made up answers as she went along. By the time she’d reached her front door, she had created her story:
She was moving to a less expensive apartment over near Burgoo, she said. This news was greeted by sympathetic or annoyed eye rolls from neighbors, who agreed their apartments here were overpriced. Now that she was working with Quinn (always looking for a place to slip in his name), it was only twenty-five minutes more to drive to the tree farm. Lots of people drove that far. And besides, she’d added with a toss of her ponytail, even though starting her car was still a crapshoot, if for some reason it didn’t start, she could always give Quinn a shout and he’d pick her up in the helicopter.
She realized she might have gone too far with that last statement, but she was building her fantasy life, and in that Quinn was center stage.
Chapter 11
Determination
Fortitude
Grit
Molly knew her new words were going to have to sustain her through several busy days. Mornings were spent packing the apartment box by box, loading the trunk of her car, and taking things surreptitiously to Crabby’s. Crabby actually had a shower in the bathroom off the office. She knew she would have to use water sparingly. She wouldn’t want the water bill to go up on her account.
She had some pride.
There were more immediate problems. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to do with Galileo’s cage—she thought about trying to push it down the street in the middle of the night, but Crabby’s was five miles away. It didn’t seem likely that no one would notice.
She made sure she arrived at the tree farm in plenty of time to accompany Quinn for a helicopter ride over his spread, dipping deep into the trees and pointing out the work she’d done the day before. Then they’d hop over to Burgoo, grab breakfast and coffee-to-go for Manny, and she’d return to her work on the farm.
She always spent time in her secret spot, the lean-to in the towering evergreen she now thought of as her tree fort. She never tired of watching the land and trees below her and the river lazily winding off to her right side. She’d also repaired an ancient rope hoist that could carry heavy bundles from the ground into the tree. Not that she needed a hoist. It was just good to figure out the mechanics of the thing. Civil engineers were like that.
Although from her perch in the tree she was looking down at the earth, she couldn’t really compare the sensation of sitting quietly by herself in the tree fort to flying over the land with Quinn in the helicopter. Zipping through the air at dizzying speeds with Quinn was electrifying, while sitting alone in the tree fort was soothing and contemplative. She’d brought a sketchbook and spent her lunch hour drawing.
Bale would drift through her mind. It had been almost a week since he’d come back to town. She should stop by his lot as soon as she was settled at Crabby’s. She wasn’t proud of it, but she’d also brought a pair of binoculars to the lean-to. She brought them to keep an eye on Quinn down at the office, but found, to her astonishment, that she could also see all the way to Bale’s Tiny Dreams lot. She could see him playing fetch with Thor, greeting potential customers, and working in his shop. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except he seemed to be avoiding her.
She stopped at Gilbert’s Groceries for supplies. One good thing about hiding out in a deserted restaurant: there were plenty of cabinets and lots of refrigerator space. She’d decided that there would be no cooking—she knew the aromatic smells wafting out of Crabby’s would draw the locals like bees to flowers. But she could load up on fruit, juices, cheese, crackers, lunch meat, bread, almond milk, and cereal.
By the time she needed to vacate tomorrow, she’d only have the tree house model and Galileo to relocate.
And that damned cage.
As she loaded her groceries onto the conveyor belt, a familiar voice asked:
“Do you want to purchase any bags?”
Molly looked up. It was Manny. What was he doing here? He was wearing a crisp white shirt that said “Gilbert’s Groceries.”
“Hey, Manny,” Molly said.
“Hey, Mols,” he said. “So, do you want to buy a bag?”
Buy? A? Bag? Molly’s couldn’t wrap her brain around the inquiry. There were so many more important questions right now. Such as: Why was her new coworker at Quinn’s moonlighting as a bagger at the local grocery store?
She tried to focus.
“No thanks,” she said, pulling her backpack from her shoulders and handing it to him. “I can put everything in here.”
Manny nodded, and started stuffing her purchases into the lime-green backpack. She quickly eyed her groceries as they were swallowed up by the gaping drawstring mouth, wondering if anything screamed that her lifestyle was about to change.
The groceries seemed innocent enough.
She paid with her credit card, holding her breath while the cash register’s computer took its time deciding if the transaction was going to be approved.
It was. She let out her breath and returned her focus to Manny. Life was certainly one adventure after another when you had no money.
“Can you take a break for a minute?” Molly asked suddenly.
Manny looked at Doris, the ancient cashier with her bright red lipstick perpetually partying in the fine lines around her mouth. Doris shrugged. Manny appeared to take that as approval, and he paid the shrug forward. Molly shouldered her backpack and they left the store together.
“What’s new?” Molly asked, hoping Manny would jump in with some specifics to her vague inquiry.
More shrugging.
“I mean,” Molly asked impatiently, “why aren’t you working at Quinn’s?”
“I am working at Quinn’s,” Manny said. “But I… I never asked how much money I was going to make. Got my first paycheck two days ago and…”
Molly bit her lip. She hadn’t asked either. It seemed rude somehow. Besides, it couldn’t be less than they made at Crabby’s.
&
nbsp; “It’s less than we made at Crabby’s,” Manny said. “Without the tips…way less.”
“We’ll get tips when the busy season starts,” Molly offered.
She knew she was grasping at straws.
“That’s six months from now,” he said. “So I got another part-time job here. It’s not ideal, but with the two gigs, I can make the rent, food…you know.”
She did know.
“I guess I’ll find out what I’m making when I see Quinn next,” Molly said.
This statement seemed to brighten Manny’s mood.
“Oh, you didn’t ask either? Cool, I thought I was the only loser.”
“No. You’re not the only loser.”
Manny shrugged again and went back into Gilbert’s. Molly got in her car—which started—and headed up to Crabby’s, her mind reeling. Even with the news that she might not be making as much money as she’d hoped, she refused to be distracted and kept her wits about her. She waited until nobody was on the road and then pulled into the parking lot, steering quickly around back to hide her car. As she turned off the motor, a thought jumped into her head.
She smacked the steering wheel.
“Damn it!” she said.
She forgot to get a copy of her one key. She didn’t want to get a copy made in town, in case anyone might ask her what she was doing. Thinking back over her life, she could not remember one instance when anyone had ever questioned her about getting a key made, but you could never be too careful in a situation like this. She thought about getting a copy in Burgoo, but she was always with Quinn when in Burgoo, so that wasn’t going to happen.
She could always get a key made tomorrow.
Not that she really needed a spare. One thing about having Curly as an older brother: she’d learned all kinds of practical things—like picking a lock. Not that Curly would ever use his powers for evil.
Was she evil, using Crabby’s without permission?
Best not to go there.
She opened the trunk of her car and started to unload her boxes. She let herself into the back, balancing her boxes on one knee while she hit the light switch. The storage unit flooded with light. She dropped off one of the boxes and headed to the kitchen with the groceries.
Tiny House in the Trees Page 8