by Sadie Rabbit
Olivia bit her lower lip. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been there in ages. Did something happen?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with, no,” Mr. Albion said. “It’s just that your husband’s attorney claims an employee, or someone on his payroll, may have been the victim of a prank, and he thought myself, or you, or someone you know may have been involved. It’s silly really. No, I just wanted to put my conscious at ease. Nothing to worry about at all.”
Olivia shrieked when she hung up the phone. “Oh my god!” she said. “You really ruffled some feathers tonight! My attorney got contacted by Mike’s attorney to see if we were involved in a ‘prank’ at the Brown Street Starbucks tonight.”
The two women looked at one another and burst into laughter.
“I think we’re in over our heads,” Olivia said, after they’d composed themselves.
Charlotte sighed and scooted closer to her friend. She knew Olivia never broke the rules, and the idea of getting in trouble scared her.
“We haven’t done a damn thing,” Charlotte said. “I mean think about it. What’s the absolute worst-case scenario? I get a misdemeanor for popping someone’s tire? I’d have to buy the PI a replacement and maybe do some community service. C’mon Livy, he was hired to spy on someone you know. You think he wants to tell the police he was spying on someone at Starbucks when a yoga instructor jammed a nail in his tire? Please. They’re amateurs!”
Olivia shook her head.
“I’ve watched enough movies to know how these things work,” Charlotte said. “And, in fact, your fabulous friend has a great idea on how to speed up this whole divorce episode, too.”
“What’s that?” Olivia asked cautiously.
“I think we should break into Mike’s house and look at his computer records,” Charlotte said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Absolutely not,” Charlotte said. “He did the same thing to you, and he’s using it as blackmail.”
“I don’t even need the money anymore,” Olivia said.
“Yeah, but this isn’t about the money,” Charlotte said. “It’s about justice. You didn’t do anything wrong, and Mike’s trying to blackmail you with shame. I’m serious, Livy. I’ve thought about this a lot. You know everything about that house — every nook and cranny. We could be in and out in five minutes. No one would be the wiser. And, if your attorney asks where you got the info, you could just say Mike never changed his passwords, and you accessed his email from here.”
“How are we going to hack his computer?” Olivia asked.
“I’m guessing we won’t need to,” Charlotte said. “If he ever saved his email password in his browser, we can access it in 30 seconds!
“Besides, the more I think about all this, the more convinced I am there’s some reason why Mike wants a divorce. Out of the blue, he starts being a complete and total asshole? It doesn’t make sense. There’s got to be another woman involved. The whole thing reeks of cheating.”
“You realize how crazy you sound?” Olivia asked. “This could get us in a lot of trouble. Breaking and entering is a felony.”
“It’s only a felony if we get caught,” Charlotte said. “And there’s no way we’d get caught. We just need to figure out when Mike’s going out of town, and sneak in one of the upstairs windows. He basically did it to you while you were in Hawaii! It’s only fair that you get the same sort of information on him. Besides, I’ve always been taught that you have to fight fire with fire.”
“I’m going to vomit if I hear that phrase again,” Olivia said. “Now, pass me that Malbec, and let’s talk about something else.”
Charlotte handed her the Malbec, and Olivia took a drink straight from the bottle.
“I have to show you something,” Charlotte said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a computer printout.
Olivia scanned it. It was an advertisement for a business conference in Atlanta.
“Look who’s speaking in Atlanta tomorrow morning,” Charlotte said.
Olivia scanned the names at the bottom of the ad and saw Mike Hampton from P&G. “Oh my god,” she said. “You’re serious about this.”
“Of course, I am,” Charlotte said. “He must have already left for Atlanta. We can go tonight.”
“How long have you been planning this?” Olivia asked.
“Does it matter?”
Olivia shook her head. “How would we even get up to one of the second story windows?”
“I’ve got a plan,” Charlotte said. “You just need to go in the living room, and dig some black clothes out of those cardboard boxes.”
“I’m not going anywhere until we finish this Malbec,” Olivia said. “And then I’m going to bed.”
“Spies don’t actually drink their drinks,” Charlotte said.
“And I’m just a soon-to-be-divorced felon who’s thirsty,” Olivia said, pouring herself a very full glass. “I’m not breaking in anywhere.”
“One more glass, and then we’ll go,” Charlotte said.
“One more glass, and we’ll think about it,” Olivia said.
Charlotte smiled deviously.
“My best friend is insane,” Olivia said.
“There’s a fine line between insanity and brilliance,” Charlotte said.
∞
An hour later, Olivia was more than a little drunk. She sat stock still in the passenger seat of her best friend’s SUV. Both women wore black clothes from head to toe. The radio was off, and neither woman spoke. There was no moon tonight, and there weren’t any other cars on the road. Olivia wondered if she and Charlotte were the only two people awake in Dayton at 3 a.m.
Thankfully, Olivia’s old house had a back entrance for the gardeners. No one would see them approach.
Charlotte turned off the headlights and hunched over the steering wheel as she pulled onto the gravel. The darkness was nearly complete.
“This is spooky,” Olivia whispered.
Charlotte reached over and squeezed her friend’s hand. “We can do this,” she said. “No one knows this place like you. You could probably get in with your eyes closed.”
As Charlotte wound slowly around a bend in the road, the greenhouse came into view, and Olivia felt her stomach drop. She hadn’t realized how much she missed her house until now, and that kindled anger in her stomach. Charlotte’s right; Mike doesn’t deserve to keep everything. He shouldn’t be allowed to intimidate and bully me.
Charlotte parked beside the pool, the SUV shielded from the house and neighbors by an elbow-shaped bank of evergreen trees.
Maybe this will be easy, Olivia thought.
They climbed out of the SUV and paused — both of them listening carefully to catch any unnatural sounds. There was nothing except the tap of a branch bouncing off the greenhouse glass in the breeze.
Charlotte opened the back of the SUV and pulled out a heavy case. “Help me with this,” she said quietly.
“What is it?”
“It’s a fold-up ladder. I got it on Amazon Prime for $200. Free shipping.”
“It’s heavy as sin,” Olivia said.
They trudged up the hill, both of them carrying an opposite side of the heavy plastic case. By the time they got to the house, they were breathing heavily. They sat down to rest with their backs against the case.
“We can do this,” Charlotte said.
Long before Olivia wanted to move, her friend was standing, quietly unlatching the case and pulling out the ladder. Unfolding the ladder was a job in itself. Each latch clanged loudly into place, and when they finally had the ladder stretched out to its full length on the grass, they could see it was too tall for the job. Charlotte could have bought a ladder half as tall and half the weight.
“This is going to be the hard part,” she said. “We have to stand the ladder up.”
It was lying flat in the grass with the base of the ladder closest to the house. They walked away from the house to the top of the ladder and picked it up
so it was waist high. With a grunt, they hefted the top of the ladder over their heads and started walking toward the house, sliding their hands down the ladder as they went. With each step, the top of the ladder rose higher and higher until it was standing perfectly vertical.
Olivia’s arms were exhausted from the work. She could feel her muscles trembling under her clothes. She could also see if they leaned the ladder against the house now, it would rest directly on Mike’s office window.
“We’ve got to back up,” she whispered.
“I need to rest,” Charlotte said. “My arms feel like noodles. Let’s set it against the glass and back it up in a minute.”
Olivia nodded. As they tilted the ladder toward the house, though, they realized how top-heavy it was. The whole thing moved faster than they anticipated; much too fast. It was gaining speed, and they couldn’t do a thing to slow it down. Olivia held her breath as the ladder slammed into the glass with a magnificent crash. Both women closed their eyes and ducked. Shards of glass rained down around them.
When Olivia opened her eyes, she saw her friend in the same position she was: crouched down, hands covering her face. They didn’t make a sound. And for a moment, they thought no one had heard the commotion.
Then, they saw a light flip on at the neighbor’s house. It was the Vincents, a nosy older couple that Olivia had spent years trying to ignore. They held their breath when they heard a patio door slide open. Olivia imagined the old man shuffling onto his deck in a pair of slippers.
“Hello,” he called out in a wavering voice. “Anyone there?”
There was no answer. A minute passed, then two. Then, the patio door opened and closed again.
“Shit,” Charlotte said. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Olivia said. She was so angry her hands shook.
“Calm down,” Charlotte hissed. “We can’t lose our cool now. We’ve still got to go inside and copy his passwords.”
“No way,” Olivia said. “We need to get the hell out of here. Nothing you can say or do will get me up that ladder.”
“I know,” Charlotte said. “I’ll do it. We’ll figure out what to do about the window later. You just carry the case back to the SUV.”
Olivia stood and ran back to the SUV with the case, her heart thumping hard in her chest. After she’d tucked the case away, she looked back at the house and realized she could hardly see the ladder from there. That meant old man Vincent couldn’t have seen anything from his vantage point. Still, he might have called the cops. Olivia doubted it, but she wouldn’t put it past the old codger.
By the time Olivia got back to the ladder, Charlotte was climbing down.
“You figured out the password?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “We’re going to leave the ladder.”
“What do you mean?” Olivia asked.
“We need to get the window replaced,” Charlotte said. “I’ll call someone in the morning and you can meet them here. They’ll think you live here.”
“Jesus,” Olivia said. “This is just getting better and better. This was such a great idea, Charlotte.”
“Hush,” her friend said. “We can talk about it later. Right now, we need get out of here.”
Without a word, Charlotte jogged off toward the SUV. She didn’t look back. Olivia stood there for a moment looking up at the gaping hole in her old house. Then, she set off running after Charlotte.
∞
Maybe we can pull this off.
Olivia stood in the foyer of her old house looking anxiously out the window while she waited for the repairman.
She’d parked her car in the back. Then, she used the ladder to sneak inside the house. Fortunately, it hadn’t rained. She took it as a good omen, too, that Mike had gotten the locks changed but wasn’t smart enough to update the alarm code on the security system.
The repairman showed up in a giant truck emblazoned with the company name. He walked slowly and bow-legged, sighing a lot like he’d just ridden a horse for 20 miles.
“My nephew hit a baseball through the glass,” Olivia told him. The repairman grunted. He took the measurements, unscrewed and removed the old window frame and assured her that the new window would be a perfect match. He promised to come back at 2 p.m. that afternoon. That meant Olivia would be alone in her old house for four hours.
She set about cleaning up the glass. She knew that even a single shard — especially inside the house — could give them away. She vacuumed first and emptied the bag. Then, she laboriously crawled over the carpet on hands and knees looking for any leftover shards.
In the backyard, she combed the grass for 15 minutes. She’d hardly slept last night, and by the time she finished, she was exhausted. She was certain there wasn’t a shard of stray glass anywhere on the premises, though.
And that meant all she had to do was wait. She walked to the greenhouse. She wanted to see if Mike had killed her plants yet. They were fine, though, reaching toward the sun as they always had — oblivious to the passions and betrayals of mankind. At least Mike hadn’t fired the gardeners yet.
Satisfied, Olivia climbed to the top of the porch and collapsed onto a patio chair. Sitting there, she closed her eyes and let the solitude wash over her.
She awoke two hours later to the repairman tapping her lightly on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I tried the doorbell, but you didn’t answer, so I walked around back. We installed everything using that ladder there.”
He pointed toward the window.
“I can’t believe I didn’t hear you,” Olivia said.
“Ah, well, you looked peaceful there, and it doesn’t take a lot of noise to put in a window.”
They walked inside, and Olivia nodded in approval. Even she couldn’t tell the new window from the old one. She pulled out a stack of bills and paid the repairman in cash. Then, she had him help her fold up the ladder and load it in her car.
“I borrowed it from a friend,” she said, wincing as she realized it was one of the few honest things she’d said all morning.
The man tipped his cap at her and let himself out.
That left Olivia with one last task: making the new window look old. It was too perfect, too clean. She rubbed a handful of dust off Mike’s bicycle in the garage. Then, she walked carefully upstairs, her fist balled up with the dust inside. When she got to the window, she blew a soft coating of it onto the glass. Static cling held it brilliantly in place, and Olivia bit her lower. This really is going to work.
She felt giddy leaving the house. As soon as Olivia closed her car door, her phone rang.
“You’re never going to guess what I found,” Charlotte said on the other end. “I was entirely wrong about Mike. He didn’t meet another girl, but there’s something better than that. You’ve got to get over here.”
“I’m leaving now,” Olivia said. She took one last look at her old house and drove off. The window was in place, the doors were locked and the alarm was set. This better have been worth it, Olivia thought.
∞
Thomas had wanted to open the package for as long as he’d known about it. It was the only physical thing he had from his grandfather, Pika.
Pika showed it to him before he died. “This is for you,” his grandfather said, “but only when you find the woman you love. I want you to promise me you won’t open it until you find her.”
“I promise,” Thomas had said.
Pika was Hawaiian, but he lived and died in Dayton. He died young — just 52 when Thomas was 8.
After his death, Thomas’s grandmother, Kani, had taken the package to Hawaii. “I’ll keep it for you,” she said. “You’ll know when it’s time to pick it up.”
Thomas didn’t know if now was the time, but he did believe in signs. And there had been too many to ignore. Not only was he obsessed with Olivia, but her trip to Hawaii, her proximity to Kani, the Superhero Ball, the divorce, everything felt to
o perfect. There was a force out there, and it was pulling Thomas and Olivia together.
He used a pocketknife to cut away the packaging. Inside, he found a yellowed letter and a small wooden box with a carving of a shark on top.
Aloha Thomas, the letter began.
I suspect it’s been quite a while since we last spoke, and I hope the days have treated you well. I have faith they have. You have the blood of the islanders in you. We always find happiness and adventure in the end.
You’re too young to remember my father, but he had these sayings he brought back from Hawaii. He’d spout them off to anyone who listened. A few of them stuck with me, especially this one: ‘A fisherman in the shallows uses a short line; a deep sea fisherman has a very long line.’
I think he meant that if all you do is swim in the ocean, you’ll never see the grandeur, the scale and the mystery of it. You have to dive deep to truly understand something. You have to get lost in the seas and find your way home again.
Love is like the ocean. Most of us only know its surface. Even me. I thought I had love before, yes, but I didn’t know what it truly was until I grew old. I can see now that it’s nothing easy. It’s powerful, overwhelming, irrational even. But I know, too, it’s the one thing that makes life worth living. I want nothing more than for you to find your one true love. And when you do, I’d like to give you a gift. Consider it the last adventure you and I will go on together.
Inside this box, you’ll find a key to a safe deposit box at the bank on the base. I’d like you to find and open that safe deposit box with the love of your life at your side. I think you’ll like what’s inside. In the meantime, dive deep, my boy. I love you now and forever.
Aloha,
Pika
Thomas furrowed his brow. He opened the small wooden box and found exactly what his grandfather said he would: an old brass safe-deposit key. He sighed. He’d thought that opening the box would solve the mystery; not create a new one. He tucked the letter and key back in the box and sat it on his bookshelf. I don’t know if Olivia’s the one, Thomas thought, but I’m going to find out.