Another long low whistle, and Alexi with Callie were pressed to the wall as Marlene ascended to the kitchen. The second she entered, Matt came through the back door.
“Hello, I’m Marlene,” she said as she eyed the kitchen table with the cake platter of banana muffins Alexi had risen to bake while dawn was still gray. “You Matt?”
“Uh, yeah.” Matt sidled over to Alexi, his eyes round. Alexi smiled at him as if everything was just peachy.
Marlene took a seat and a muffin. “Here, have one,” she said to Matt and pushed the plate toward him.
To Alexi, she said, “I know what you’re up to with the muffins. You aren’t the first one to use that trick. Let’s face it, they’d have to be packed with hallucinogens not to make me see what a wreck of a house you’re living in.”
Matt stopped unpeeling the wrapper from his muffin. Brenda had never spoken this openly in front of Matt.
“Yes, certainly you caught us in a bit of a transition...” Alexi fumbled. “We’ve made... A number of improvements have been made... Look...a fridge and stove.” As soon as the words were out, Alexi realized her mistake.
And so did Marlene. “You telling me,” she said around her muffin, “that when you moved in there weren’t any?”
Alexi waved her hand, aiming for nonchalance. “Oh, a few days. We adapted well. Life is all about adapting to circumstances. Isn’t it?”
Could she sound more idiotic?
Marlene swept crumbs off her chest and stood, brushing more crumbs off her lap. “Looks as if you all adapted to living like rats.”
She stood and walked to the fridge, opened its door, and again emitted her whistle. “Oo-whee...a regular Mother Hubbard cupboard in here.” She turned to Alexi. “Please tell me you got more food than almond milk and watermelon around here.”
Never had any caseworker gone through her stuff with such authoritative gusto. Marlene must be what Brenda had meant when she referred to the unsympathetic workers at the Red Deer office. In a way, she was the kind of caseworker Alexi wished she’d had when she was a kid in the system living with people who kept their fridge that empty all the time.
She’d packed everything, absolutely everything inside her Calgary pantry, so she was able to swing open its door and show all the baking essentials and dry stuffs like rice, beans, flour, sugar...the whole lot.
Marlene grunted and turned back to the fridge. “How about the freezer?”
No, no, no. Marlene slid open the drawer and stared into the cold emptiness. “Not even a popsicle. What do you do for meat?”
“I just moved in last week,” Alexi said, thinking fast. “I’m buying fresh until I source out a local supplier and get a side of beef. It’s cheaper and healthier.”
“Where will you keep it all? I didn’t see a freezer in my travels around this disaster zone.”
“It’s still in storage,” Alexi lied flat out. What else could she say? Marlene didn’t pursue it, probably because she had too much else to occupy her thoughts.
“And you talked to your landlord about this state of emergency?”
“Landlady,” Alexi said. “I’ve already been reimbursed for the rent, and I’ve been assured that the work will be finished in four to six weeks.” She didn’t add that the reimbursements and reassurances had come from the landlady’s brother.
“Professionally?”
“Yes,” Alexi said. If “professional” meant Seth received payment, then she’d placed a deposit last night—on his lips. She felt her cheeks heat at the memory and hoped her color wasn’t visible to the eagle-eyed Marlene.
“He used to live in this house,” Matt added, “so it’s easy for him to fix it.”
“Oh?” Marlene leaned against the island counter, all chummy-like, her broad back forming a wall between Alexi and Matt. “Used to live here? Before the renovations I take it?”
“He grew up in this house. Actually, he’s lived here all his life, except for when he moved out,” Matt carried on. “The landlady is his sister. He’s fixing up the house because his sister won’t.”
Alexi slipped behind Matt to include herself in the caseworker’s line of sight but not Matt’s. “Not won’t, can’t. Lacks the skill. Other tradesmen—qualified tradesmen—completed the kitchen cabinetry and floor...” Alexi trailed off, realizing that once again enumerating the improvements only confirmed how substandard the place was at move-in.
“Looks to me the landlady’s lacking in a lot of areas,” Marlene opined and turned to Matt. “Hey, can you get me my bag? Left it at the door. It’s the one packed with bricks.”
Matt scooted a look at Alexi, who shooed him off with her hand. She resisted the urge to go with him. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”
A hopeful look appeared on the caseworker’s face. “You don’t have Dr Pepper hidden away, by chance?”
“Uh, no.”
“Too bad. Something else quick and easy and legal.”
“I could get you a slushie,” Matt volunteered as he entered the kitchen, dragging the bag, black and fat like a potbellied pig, across the rough boards. “I can get whatever color you want.”
“A slushie? Haven’t tackled one of those in a dog’s age. Thanks,” Marlene said, taking her bag from Matt. “Sure, get me one, please. Something green and glowing.”
Matt was dispatched to Mac’s, Alexi making sure that Marlene saw her peel off a twenty from Seth’s stack of cash.
After the door thudded shut behind him, Marlene said, “You’re not worried about him running off?”
For the first time in the visit, Alexi experienced real fright. Of course, Marlene had read the file. The woman might dress like a flood victim but she knew her job.
Alexi dropped into the chair across from Marlene and pulled Callie into her lap. She needed to pay attention—better attention—to her every word from here on in.
“He’ll come back,” she said, and then halted at any further explanation. Everything she’d said up to now only seemed to dig herself a deeper hole. She repeated, “He’ll come back.”
Alexi glanced out the window at Bryn and Amy. Unaware that company had arrived, they sat in the wading pool, their heads bent over a collection of floating leaves. Who knew what that was all about? She could only hope it would last until Marlene left. Callie shifted and reached for the bowl of pink Play-Doh, her go-to comfort activity.
From her bag, Marlene pulled out a long triplicate form, dated it and got to the point. “You got problems, Alexi Docker.”
No kidding, Alexi nearly snapped back. Instead, she unleashed her prepared response. “Things look worse than they really are. Admittedly, the renos were unexpected but there is a plan in place and within weeks it should be better. I’m sure you’d agree it’s not unusual for renos to take longer than planned.”
“My point, exactly. What I don’t get is why you moved into the house when it looked even worse than it does now.”
Alexi was glad Marlene didn’t know that there was once no water. “I saw it before the renovations and I wasn’t advised that it was undergoing renovations at the time I made the agreement.”
“Didn’t you have some kind of walk-through?”
Why was the woman fixated on the house? “I’d thought there was going to be one but the landlady was out of town. We had a mix-up with the move-in dates.”
“Why did you decide to relocate here?”
“I researched the area, and it had what my family needed.”
“Researched? You mean you hadn’t been to this part of the country before. No family, no friends?”
“No.”
“You saw this place and decided to leave Calgary and come here?”
Alexi made the mistake of hesitating, and Marlene pounced.
“Did you even see it before coming here?”
Callie was having trouble fla
ttening the dough so Alexi helped her, her hands over Callie’s little ones. “I saw pictures.”
“So you never physically saw this place before moving in?”
“No.”
Marlene wrote a line in sprawling black ink.
“There a reason for that? You had a job starting immediately?”
“No. I work from home.”
The pen was poised over a blank section. “That’s right. Little Wonders. Tell me about that.”
“I sell plush toys online.”
Marlene fixed Alexi with a shrewd look. “You make a living from that?”
Alexi said what she had to say. “I do.”
“You realize you’ll have to back that up at some point?”
Callie was pressing the cupcake cutter into the dough but not nearly hard enough. Again, Alexi helped, hand over hand. “I do.”
“So why did you decide to leave Calgary?”
Explaining herself to Seth had been so much easier. He’d accepted her explanation that she’d gone along with Matt’s gut instinct. Marlene would think her an airhead.
Alexi tugged the extra Play-Doh from the edges of the cutter. “As you know, if you’ve read the files from the past year, Matt has bolted several times since the death of my husband. He could no longer stand being in the house. He told me that. The place was emotionally damaging to him.”
“Why not get another place in the neighborhood, then?”
“Matt wanted to leave and come here. As you probably know from his file, Matt can be very decisive.”
“You do everything he tells you to do?”
“I listen to everything he tells me.”
“There are plenty of towns like this around Alberta. Why did he choose this one?”
She couldn’t tell Marlene that it was all done on the gut feeling of a boy with a history of running on instinct. “I don’t know. Maybe because he once lived here for a time?”
Marlene grunted and tapped her pen against her pad. Tap, tap, tap. She righted her pen, ready to note something, halted and returned to her tapping. Clearly Marlene didn’t like what she was hearing. She grunted again, except this time she flew her pen into action. She scribbled a note in the margin and drove a hard circle around it. Then she set down her pen.
“Okay. Let me get this straight. You leave the home you and the kids have lived in for the past five years to come to live in a dive in a town you know nothing about to make toys, which you could do just about anywhere. Because your kid said so.”
She leaned forward, her heavy breasts pressing on her notes. “This is the thing. You don’t seem like a nut job. Your previous caseworker makes you sound like a saint. Only, I’m seeing a whole lot of things that don’t add up. Unless—” she leaned even closer “—you insert a man into the equation.”
Alexi squeezed the Play-Doh until it oozed out the bottom of her hands. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
Marlene cocked an eyebrow at Alexi’s Play-Doh. “I think you do but let’s get explicit. You and the handyman. What’s the story?”
Alexi plucked the tacky gunk from between her fingers. “There’s nothing between us.”
Marlene sighed. “Uh, right. The landlady’s brother does all this work out of the kindest of his heart.”
“Actually, yes, he does.”
Marlene gave her a skeptical look. “Uh-huh. Listen, do you intend to have a relationship with him?”
“Of course not,” Alexi said, and instantly wished she’d said nothing. It sounded so lame.
Marlene flipped to a clean page. “Does this handyman have a name?”
“Uh...Seth Greene. He owns a roofing company in town. Greene-on-Top.”
Marlene started to scribble like mad, line and lines pouring down, completely disproportionate to Alexi’s dribble of info. The caseworker clearly didn’t believe her. Alexi strived to appear unconcerned as she handed Callie little brown Play-Doh bits, the chocolate chips for the pink cupcake. Except she dropped the same brown bit three times her hand was shaking so bad. Had Marlene seen?
“Here, your turn. Let me watch you do it,” Alexi said to Callie, and slipped her hands underneath the table. Alexi searched her brain to think of the right words to tell Marlene.
Just as she’d searched—and failed—to find the right words last night with Seth. Their kiss had been...miraculous. At least for her. She’d lost herself with Seth, and yes, her gaze had strayed to the phone, as if she’d arrived back from a journey and was centering herself on an old familiar object.
She missed Richard but what she felt for Seth was real and new and important, yet at the same time of such incredibly poor timing. Nothing could happen between them until Matt’s adoption was final. And who knew when that might be?
The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” went off on Marlene’s phone. “And that,” said Marlene, shutting her phone off, “is a wrap.” She began shoving her papers together into her bag. “Sorry, I have to hurry, otherwise the Blue Jays will start without me.”
“So where do we go from here?”
Marlene spared her a glance. “Nowhere fast. I need to shuffle paper around. But I can tell you right now, there’ll be a few more visits before I’m done.”
Alexi blew out her breath. So much for watching her words. Marlene had also watched. And judged.
At the door, Marlene paused. “Can you believe it? I’m leaving before I get my slushie. Funny how that worked out. I guess the boy gets a treat for all his trouble.”
* * *
SETH CALLED ALEXI from his room after nine that night, having taken a shower and pulled on a clean T-shirt and shorts. He’d logged in a full twelve-hour day on a hot roof, and not one of those hours went by that he hadn’t thought about Alexi’s interview. He’d held off calling until now because he hadn’t wanted Mel or Ben or a supplier or any of the four kids to interrupt.
He wanted to talk just the two of them like last night, no competition. Of course, talking to her on the phone meant Richard would be there, too. Still, in this rivalry with her dead husband it had to count for something that he, at least, had a pulse.
He stared down from his third-floor window at the traffic, at how the setting sun aimed harsh light off windshields, walls, the deck railing. The phone rang six times, and he had begun to wonder if maybe she was calling it an early night when she answered.
“Hey there,” he replied. “How did it go today?”
“Oh. Okay.” Her voice was low and tired and most definitely not okay.
“What happened? Do you want me to come over?”
“No!” He could hear her exhale. “Here’s how it went. Matt said there was a handyman—you—helping to fix up the place, which was fine. The caseworker needed to know something was being done. Then it came out that the handyman was the landlady’s brother...and Marlene—the caseworker—began connecting dots. In her mind, why would I come to a new town into a house I hadn’t seen and needs work unless I knew someone already? And why else would you volunteer your time to fix up a house, especially one you grew up in, unless you were involved with me? I told her the truth about why you’re helping but, Seth, you have to admit the truth sounds weak.”
Except he’d spent the last few weeks believing it, and he needed this caseworker to believe it, too. “She thinks it’s weak to help out a widow and her kids?”
“Seth—” She stopped, and when she restarted, it was with great care. “You have to know how thankful I am for you. But you are one in a million. In this day and age, to this extent...yeah...I don’t blame Marlene for thinking there’s an ulterior motive.”
There was an ulterior motive. He did want something out of this. Last night’s kiss proved that.
She’d nixed that idea.
“The thing is...the thing is that—” he could hear her draw in her breath “—I might ha
ve given Marlene the impression that there was something between us. I mean not now. But that there will be.”
The sun shifted down to an angle straight into Seth’s eyes. Blinded, he turned away from the window. Blinded and blindsided. “What?”
“She asked if I intended to pursue a relationship with you after the adoption and I said no, but I don’t think she was convinced.”
It hurt that she talked about her rejection of him with a perfect stranger. He blinked. “Yeah, I got the point last night. So why wasn’t she convinced as much as I was?”
“Because...because I think Marlene saw the truth.”
Seth had never felt more confused. “Which is what?”
A few excruciating beats passed and then she said, “I want us to be together.”
He actually experienced vertigo as he stumbled and dropped to his bed, the bounce of the mattress throwing his balance off further. He closed his eyes against the motion.
Alexi wanted what he wanted. Only—and the realization spun his head faster—not if she knew the truth about him.
“Seth? Seth.” Alexi’s voice pierced through his senses. “Are you there?”
“Alexi,” he said, eyes still shut. “You didn’t mention my name to the caseworker, did you?”
Something in his tone must’ve struck her, because her answer was quick and nervous. “Yes, of course. She asked for it. I said you owned a company. You were well-known in town. What, Seth? What’s going on?”
“She’ll run a background check on me, right? A criminal record check?”
“Yes. That’s standard. Seth, tell me. What’s going on?”
Seth opened his eyes to see the perfect white of the ceiling. The apartment had been completely repainted before he and Mel had moved in. He still remembered the smell of the fresh paint, the carpets so clean and new his feet left prints, the appliances spick-and-span like no one had ever touched them.
A brand-new start.
Except he’d continued to work at the same job with his brother, who still roomed with him. Everyone still knew him. Some like Ben had known him since he was a kid, others like Paul for less but still far too well.
A Roof Over Their Heads Page 11