By the time the oven beeper went off an hour later, she’d completed another five pages of the practice test. Numbers and vocabulary words and geometry equations floated through her head like those giant Star Wars spaceships, bumping into one another.
She went into the kitchen to make dinner before work. She could choose between a bowl of Raisin Bran and an apple with peanut butter. She picked the apple. When she finished eating, she dressed in a nice pair of black pants and a heavy pink sweater. Her Rite Aid smock covered most of the sweater anyway. She grabbed her backpack—just in case she found time to finish her trigonometry homework on her dinner break—and left the apartment.
She hurried down the stairs and was just reaching for the front door knob when a voice said, “Lauren?”
Dang it. She paused, turned.
Mrs. Mauk stood in the open doorway to her apartment. A tired frown pulled the edges of her mouth downward. The wrinkles on her forehead looked painted on. “I’m still waiting for that rent check.”
“I know.” She had trouble keeping her voice even.
Mrs. Mauk moved toward her. “I’m sorry, Lauren. You know I am, but I need to get paid. Otherwise, it’s my job on the line.”
Lauren felt herself deflate. Now she’d have to ask her boss for an advance. She hated doing that. “I know. I’ll tell Mom.”
“You do that.”
She headed for the door, heard Mrs. Mauk say, “You’re a good kid, Lauren”; it was the same thing the manager said every time she had to ask for money. There was no answer to that, so Lauren kept walking, out into a rainy, navy blue night.
It took two bus changes to get her out toward the highway, where the neon bright Rite Aid pharmacy offered all night hours. She hurried into the store, even though she wasn’t late. Even a few extra minutes on her time card helped.
“Uh, Lauren?” It was Sally Ponochek, the pharmacist. As always, she was squinting. “Mr. Landers wants to see you.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She went back to the employees’ lunchroom and dropped off her stuff, then went upstairs to the manager’s small, supply-cramped office. All the way there she practiced how she would ask it: I’ve worked here for almost a year. I work every holiday—you know that. I’ll work Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve this year. Is there any way I could get an advance on this week’s salary?
She forced herself to smile at him. “You wanted to see me, Mr. Landers?”
He looked up from the papers on his desk. “Oh. Lauren. Yes.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, recombed what was left of it across his head. “There’s no easy way to say this. We need to let you go. You’ve seen how slow business is. Word is corporate is thinking of shutting this location down. The locals simply won’t patronize a chain store. I’m sorry.”
It took a second. “You’re firing me?”
“Technically we’re laying you off. If business picks up …” He let the inchoate promise dangle. They both knew business wouldn’t pick up. He handed her a letter. “It’s a glowing recommendation. I’m sorry to lose you, Lauren.”
The house was too quiet.
Angie stood by the fireplace, staring out at the moonlit ocean. Heat radiated up her legs but somehow didn’t reach her core. She crossed her arms, still cold.
It was only eight-thirty; too early for bed.
She turned away from the window and looked longingly at the stairs. If only she could turn back time a few years, become again the woman who slept easily.
It had been easier with Conlan’s arms around her. She hadn’t slept alone in so long she’d forgotten how big a mattress could be, how much heat a lover’s body generated.
There was no way she’d sleep tonight, not the way she felt right now.
What she needed was noise. The approximation of a life.
She bent down and grabbed her keys off the coffee table, then headed for the door.
Fifteen minutes later, she was parked in Mira’s driveway. The small two-story house sat tucked on a tiny lot, hemmed on both sides by houses of remarkable similarity. The front yard was littered with toys and bikes and skateboards.
Angie sat there a minute, clutching the steering wheel. She couldn’t bust in on Mira’s family at nine o’clock. It would be too rude.
But if she left now, where would she go? Back to the silence of her lonely cottage, to the shadowland of memories that were best left alone?
She opened the door, got out.
The night closed around her, chilled her. She smelled autumn. A bloated gray cloud floated overhead, started spitting rain on the sidewalk.
She hurried up the walk and knocked on the front door.
Mira answered almost instantly. She stood in the entry, smiling sadly, wearing an old football jersey and Grinch slippers. Her long hair was unbound; it cascaded down her sides in an unruly mass. “I wondered how long you were going to sit out there.”
“You knew?”
“Are you kidding? Kim Fisk called the minute you parked. Andrea Schmidt called five seconds later. You forget what it’s like to live in a neighborhood.”