by B. E. Baker
“Can I have some Froot Loops?” she asks.
“I don't know,” I say. “You probably need to ask your dad about that.”
She frowns, her deep blue eyes narrowing at me. “He says they're for breakfast, but we haven't had any for almost a week. Aunt Becca finally bought some today, but not early enough for breakfast.”
This poor little girl. Her brother's sucking up all the time and energy and all she wants is a few cups of her favorite breakfast cereal. I'd be nervous about stepping on Luke's toes if I thought this was going somewhere, but I don't need to worry. So he doesn't like how I deal with his kids? Oh well.
I stand up and walk into the kitchen. “You'd make an excellent lawyer someday, you know that?”
She shrugs. “My dad says I should be a shoe salesman.”
I chuckle. “Why is that?”
She sticks out her bottom lip. “I love shoes, and I'm good at talking him into buying more than I need.”
I hide my smile by turning toward the living room. Once I have my face schooled into neutrality again, I turn back. “Little Amy, maybe you can help me. Where are these contraband Froot Loops?”
She points to the cabinet above the fridge. “What's contramand?”
I stifle a laugh. “Contraband. It means something you aren't supposed to have.”
Her eyebrows rise. “Oh I can have them, just not when I didn't eat dinner.”
My bottom lip drops open. “Well, well, well. You didn't eat your dinner?”
She looks at the ground. “No, I mean, I can't have them after dinner.”
I giggle. She's hilarious. “It appears someone who lives here knows you pretty well. They obviously stuck those Froot Loops up high enough that you can't reach them, huh?”
She nods her head, her eyes mournful, her tone resigned. “And all the chairs in this stupid house-on-wheels are stuck to the floor, so I can't even push one over to climb up.”
I drop my jaw and widen my eyes in mock horror. “Next time I come, I'm bringing a screwdriver. You've gotta have some way to be a little naughty, don't you think?”
Her eyes sparkle. “Are you really?”
I grin. “Sure. But for now, I can reach them for you. Why don't you grab a bowl and I'll pour it before your dad comes back.”
“Okay.” Amy scrambles around me and flings a drawer open. I wasn't expecting bowls in a drawer, but I guess she can't reach the cabinets without climbing. Kid friendly house here, even if it is on wheels.
Amy bolts her cereal, and is slurping the milk when I hear steps coming from the back of the trailer. I toss her bowl into the sink and turn to face Luke with what I hope is an innocent smile.
“What are you two up to in here?” he asks.
I shrug and Amy watches me. A split second later, her shoulders rise and fall in the exact same way. On a whim, I cross my arms, and she does, too. I can't quite keep the smirk off my lips.
Luke lifts one eyebrow and stares at me, and then turns to stare at Amy. After five seconds she breaks down into a fit of giggles.
“What is so very funny, young lady?” Luke walks into the small kitchen, filling the entire space. He glances at the sink and Amy turns to me and bites her lip.
“Your pretty friend gave me Froot Loops!” Amy turns to me and whispers. “It's always better to confess than be caught. Especially with my dad.”
I whisper back. “I can't believe you threw me under the bus like that.”
“The bus?” She shrugs. “I'm five.”
Luke laughs. “Alright Amy, I appreciate you entertaining my beautiful friend while I checked on Chase. He's feeling a little better, so Aunt Becca said I can take my friend home. Can you be patient until I get back?”
Amy lifts her chin. “Will you read to me when you get home?”
He smiles. “I will.”
“Five books?”
Luke's eyebrows rise. “We just finished Percy Jackson.”
“And now you're only reading me baby books.” She scowls.
He shakes his head. “Not baby books, age appropriate ones. I'll read two Dr. Seuss ones.”
“Three,” Amy counters.
Luke sighs heavily. “I'll read three, but no bonuses or extras or wheedling.”
Amy's eyes dart sideways to my face. “I'm five. I'm not making any promises about wheedling.”
She's cracking me up.
Luke walks toward the door. “You ready to go, Mary?”
I cross the room as well. “Yeah, thanks.”
Luke walks down the steps, but before I can follow him, Amy's tiny hand grabs mine. “You'll come back, right?”
My heart constricts. How can I tell her no? But if I say yes, she'll ask me again and again. Nothing is ever enough for a small child. “Well, your dad has a lot of work, and so do I. I'm sure I'll see you again, but I'm not sure precisely when.”
Her precious face falls, her mouth turning down, her shoulders slumping.
I kneel in front of her. “Amy, you and your dad are going to be helping some kids this year, kids whose parents can't buy them much for Christmas. I'm in charge of setting everything up for that program.”
She bobs her head, but doesn't meet my eye.
“What's wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
I let go of her hand, and reach under her chin to lift it until she's looking me in the eye. “You can tell me if something's upsetting you.”
“My school's Christmas pageant is tomorrow. I get to play the angel, and I'm going to do a really good job, even though my dumb wings are made of cardboard, and Collins hogged all the glitter for the wise man crowns.” The animation in her face has returned, thankfully.
“Cardboard? Angels can't fly with cardboard wings unless they're sparkly,” I say.
“That's what I told Mrs. Hassan!”
I tsk. “I had an angel costume a long time ago, and it had real wings made with white feathers.”
She gasps and claps. “Do you still have it?”
“I'm not sure,” I say. “I can check. But even if I kept them, if your program's tomorrow night, I'm not sure how I'd get them to you in time. Maybe they can flap their way over.”
“All my friends will have their dads and their moms there. Even the ones whose parents don't like each other anymore still come. They just sit further apart, and sometimes they yell.”
“I'm so sorry your mom can't be there,” I say. “I'm sure she's equally sad.”
“Up in heaven?” she asks.
I nod my head. “Do you believe in heaven?”
“Well, that's where angels live. And my mom had to go somewhere and she was a really good mom. So yeah, I think she's probably in heaven. That's why I picked to be an angel.”
I smile. “I've got to go now, but I'll see you around.”
Amy grabs my hand with both of hers this time. “Wait, please.”
Luke climbs the steps and shakes his head. “Amy, you have to let Mary go, or she'll never want to come back.”
Amy drops my hands like they burned her. I can barely hear her next words. “Could you come to my play tomorrow night, Mary? It's late, so you can do it after work maybe. It doesn't even start until seven. You can even come if you don't find the wings. Mine stink, but I have a really neat halo made of gold pipe cleaners, and I know my lines, like really, really, super, duper well.”
Luke's leaving in less than a month. It won't be my fault things end when it's time to go. Maybe it'll be good for her to have someone there, even if it's not someone permanent.
“I suppose I can go, if it's okay with your dad.”
Luke nods his head. “Fine by me. I hear the pageant is wonderful. You'd really be missing out if you didn't come. And of course, Amy clearly needs your wings.”
The drive to my house only takes ten minutes.
“Where's your new job?” I ask.
“Louisville.”
“Oh man, if I were you, I'd have picked somewhere that's warm for the winter.”
He smacks his forehead. “You couldn't have mentioned that two months ago?”
A few minutes from my neighborhood, we pass a big, white, colonial style home. The entire outline of the house is lit up with sparkly white lights. Enormous oak trees line the circular drive, shading it during spring and summer when they're covered in leaves.
“I've loved that house for twenty years.”
Luke glances at it sideways. “Why?”
“This family used to live there with three kids and a dog. They had shiny hair, and pretty white teeth, and they'd rake leaves into piles and leap into them. They always seemed so happy. I used to pretend they were my family, and it was my house. It doesn't hurt that the house is perfect and has like everything a house should have.”
Luke looks at me sideways. “How would you know?”
I blush. “It went on the market a few years ago, and I might have gone to look at it. There's a big pool with a diving board, a cupola covered in flowering vines, and a huge custom built swing set. The whole downstairs has these gorgeous hardwood floors, and the kitchen and all the bathrooms have matching mica-flecked countertops. I know everyone loves white now, but I never moved on from the dark, hardwood cabinets, and these were custom made.” I sigh. “It's stupid, I know, and out dated, and it's still my dream house. I guess dreams when you're a little kid die hard.”
“You love it that much?”
“There are even windows in every room to keep it from looking like a cave with all the dark wood. I couldn't quite afford it then, and I doubt it'll go up for sale again anytime soon. Which is really for the best, because why would I need a mansion with a pool?”
Luke laughs. “Not much of a swimmer?”
I shake my head. “Stupid, right?”
“The heart wants what the heart wants.”
He's right. And I'm terribly afraid my heart's gearing up to be broken in a few weeks when Luke and his kids leave for Louisville. When we stop in front of my current, modest but snug home, I fling his truck door open and race up to the front porch. Luke's eyes widen, but he doesn't chase me up to the top step.
Why did I sabotage what could have been a great first kiss? A defense mechanism, I think. The same instinct is screaming for me to shut this whole thing down. After waving at Luke, I close and lock the door and lean against it with my eyes closed. I should text or call him and tell him that I'd put the ice cream back in the freezer. Or that I'm not interested in his green eggs and ham.
I should cut my losses right now.
I should, but I don't. I pull out the photo he sent me and stare at his smiling face. Then I glance at Amy's, too. I can see Luke in her eyes.
Instead of texting Luke to dump him, I spend the next two hours rummaging around in my storage closet and upending every box I have. After two and a half hours, I find them. Somewhat discolored from years of sitting in storage, but still fluffy and mostly white.
My old angel wings.
Chapter 10
Paisley doesn't make it to the United Way office Thursday morning, since Shauna's back and she insisted our audit case files be prepared by the end of the week for an office review. So when I walk in the door on Thursday afternoon, she's perched like a hawk on the edge of my desk.
“And?” Her eyebrows waggle like those of an unhinged villain on an Acme cartoon.
“Good afternoon, Paisley. How are you today?”
She stands up. “Oh come on. You didn't text me last night, or this morning. I deserve some details. My dress got this whole thing off the ground, and you still haven't returned that, by the way.”
I sigh. “Sorry. It's been a crazy week.”
“A crazy good week?”
“I sprinted from his truck up to my house so he couldn't even think about kissing me goodnight.”
Her jaw drops. “What in the world is wrong with you? I've been drooling over his photo for twenty-four hours and you run away?”
“He's got kids, and one of them was puking last night, and it cut our date short. Not my fault.”
Paisley puts a hand on her hip. “And what? You were worried you'd get sick?”
“I've got so much to do for Sub-for-Santa right now that I cannot handle a stomach virus.”
Paisley slumps into a chair. “You're a real downer, you know that?”
“Yes, I know. But I met his daughter, and she wants me to go to her Christmas pageant tonight.”
Paisley stands up and walks into her cubicle, returning with a brown box full of files. She whomps them on my desk. “That's the best news I've heard all day. I’m sure she's cute.”
“She really is adorable,” I say. “And she wants to borrow my wings, so she can be an angel in the play, which she picked because her mother's an angel.”
Paisley's face falls and she says, “Oooooh, if that isn't the cutest thing you ever heard, your heart is made of stone.”
I nod. “I know, I know.”
“So you're going?”
“I told her I’d try.”
“But?”
I gesture at the boxes. “But I've got a lot of work and I can't always do what I want to do.”
I spend all afternoon reviewing case files for audits scheduled next month. I'll have to review them again the week of the meeting, so this is a complete and total waste of time. Why am I dragging my feet? Why don't I march into Shauna's office and tell her I'll take the promotion?
If this offer came in the spring, or even the summer, I might not be struggling as much to accept it. But now, in early December, I'm spending every single morning working on Sub-for-Santa. I'm meeting and talking on the phone with families who are excited to help. I'm holding families' hands so they can provide the necessary paperwork to be included. I'm reading about their children, their darling, precious, little children, and imagining the magic they'll feel on Christmas morning when the impossible happens.
Deep down in my gut, I resent having to let this go even though I know it's not Trudy's fault.
My phone rings and instead of waiting for Paisley to answer it, I pick up. Anything to give me a reason to delay telling Shauna my plan.
“Hello?”
“Mary?” Trudy asks. “It's me.”
I giggle. “Hey me, how are you?” Trudy always says it's 'me' and I always pretend I don't know who she is. After so many years, it's not even funny anymore, but it's just what we do.
Trudy forces a laugh. “Ha ha. But seriously. I've finished all the paperwork for Troy's clinical trial. They'll notify us tomorrow for sure, but they think he could start with the continuous insulin monitor, toddler edition, as soon as next week.”
“That's amazing,” I say.
“Well, kind of. The thing is, to start we need—”
“You need the money. How much exactly?”
“Sixty thousand dollars.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, and briefly consider telling her I'll give her the money only if she stops waiting on her idiotic husband to return. If she moves in with me, the money is hers. Terrorist tactics may not be my best call, so I don't push it. “I've got a meeting with my boss today. I'll see if I can get an advance from her that will hopefully clear that, after tax. I'll call you back tonight or tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Mary. You have no idea what this means to me.”
I hang up, but I disagree. I know exactly what it means. Sixty-thousand dollars is what it means to her, same as it means to me. Even if my boss can't give me an advance on my bonus, I can pull it out of my retirement account. I'll just have to take a tremendously large penalty for doing it. I regularly chastise clients for acting so imprudently. Maybe this will give me a little more compassion for their idiocy.
I walk down the hall and tap on Shauna's door.
“Come in,” she says.
I poke my head inside, and Shauna's head lifts up from a hefty stack of paperwork I'm pretty sure is the quarterly and end of year preliminary reports.
“What do you need?” she asks.
“I've be
en giving it a lot of thought,” I say.
“Wait.” Shauna walks across her room and closes the door. “Okay, you've been thinking, and please, please tell me you're going to take the job.”
“Actually, I meant to come and tell you I wasn't.”
Shauna puts her hand on her hip. “You aren't being smart about this. You're being emotional.”
I hold out my hand to stop her. “But my sister's son is really sick, and frankly I need the money. So I'm going to take it, if it's still on the table.”
She beams. “Of course. We said you had weeks to decide. I'm so glad it will be you taking my place. I know you love tax returns, but you can still do them, a handful anyway, and you get to review the complex ones to make sure they're accurate, which is more fun than the grunt work ones anyhow.”
I like the grunt work. I'm helping people with their lives. “I guess so.”
“You can also keep a few of your clients, but you get out of here at a regular time every single day, instead of drowning under piles of paper and millions of forms in the months before tax deadlines.”
“I know that too. I hate to seem so ungrateful. I really do appreciate your recommendation.”
“You're still upset about your charity thing.” Her voice is flat.
“I am. But I'll be okay with it, I swear.”
She leans against her desk. “You're going to be the best boss this office has ever had.”
“Not better than you,” I say loyally.
She snorts. “You're way better at taxes, and you'll do great.”
“There is one other thing,” I say.
Shauna walks around to sit at her desk chair again, and gestures for me to sit down. “What's that?”
“I know this is a horrible thing to be asking, but my nephew is eligible for a clinical trial that might help eliminate a lot of the terrible side effects Type I diabetics suffer from down the road. It's super rare for a kid to be diagnosed this early, and he's struggling. This trial is specific to very young children.”
Shauna taps her fingers on the desk. “That all sounds like good news. Why do I sense a 'but'?”