“Good morning to you, Markie!”
Caught, Markie jumped away from the bushes and turned to face her neighbor, who stood in her doorway in an expensive-looking suede suit and matching shoes, examining with uncertainty the dew-dampened grass that lay between them. Markie called “Good morning” back and lifted a hand in greeting.
The gesture was lost on Mrs. Saint, who was now staring over Markie’s head. Her property was on a higher elevation, and from her vantage point, she could see over the top of the shrubs to Markie’s driveway beyond. Jesse must have looked up, because Mrs. Saint raised a hand to wave before directing her gaze back to Markie. Holding a finger in the air, she studied the wet grass again, and Markie, realizing the other woman must have something to tell her but didn’t want to yell or ruin her shoes, headed toward her. She was wearing her usual dollar-store flip-flops—she should be the one to make the trek. Mrs. Saint started at the same time, though, and they met at the fence.
“Today is a good time for you to meet Ronda,” Mrs. Saint said. “She has had not a nice week, and I think talking to someone quiet, like you—” She stopped speaking and craned to see over Markie’s head. “Oh! Chessie is arriving home, I see. I thought before that he was going.”
“He is going,” Markie said, not bothering to look. “His father’s taking him overnight.”
Mrs. Saint frowned. “Alors, I do not think this is so.”
Markie whipped her head around in time to see Kyle’s car backing out of the drive. His window was down, and he was saying something Markie couldn’t hear. Jesse, still standing in the driveway, nodded once, but she couldn’t make out his response. A second later, Kyle sped away. Long after the car was out of sight, Jesse stood there, unmoving, staring down the street. Then he wrenched the pack off his back, slammed it to the ground, and kicked it, sending it sailing several feet. Snatching it up by a single strap, he stomped toward the house, head down.
“Och,” Mrs. Saint whispered.
“Sweetheart,” Markie said, when Jesse reached the side door. “I’m so sorry.” She had learned to stop there.
Jesse, his hand on the doorknob, kept his head lowered. “It’s fine. It’s just that he has this all-day meeting in, like, an hour, and it’s really important. He tried to get out of it, but he couldn’t.”
“Do you want . . . something to eat, maybe?” Markie asked.
But he was through the door now, and she knew that by the time she made it inside, he would be in his room, lost in one of his video games, the volume turned up loud.
“The thing about a dog is, a boy will hug it.”
The words were whisper quiet, and because of the accent, and the fact that Markie was facing the opposite direction, it took her a second to figure them out.
“He will bury his face in its fur. And he will cry if he needs to. Even if he cannot allow himself to do this in front of another person.”
Markie didn’t have the energy to argue about it, especially now, so she decided to simply say goodbye and that meeting Ronda would have to wait for another day. “I think it’s best—” she began, spinning around to face her neighbor. To her amazement, the old woman’s eyes were shining, and she was holding two fingers to her lips to keep them still.
“I must go,” Mrs. Saint whispered. She turned and made her way back to her house, stepping through her side door and into her sitting room. A moment later, the sitting-room window lowered, and the curtains closed.
Markie marched into the bungalow, snatched her cell phone from the kitchen counter, and dialed her good-for-nothing ex-husband. It went to voice mail. Kyle made it a practice to never listen to voice-mail messages, but she didn’t care—she cursed at him until a beep informed her she had used up her allotted time.
Chapter Thirteen
Markie had been working in her dining room for the past two weeks, avoiding Mrs. Saint since the episode with Kyle in the driveway. She didn’t want to hear more about how Jesse needed a dog, and she didn’t want to have to lie, either, which was what she imagined it would take to get the woman to let the idea go. “Oh, everything’s fine—he and his father made up the same day.”
Everything wasn’t fine. Kyle hadn’t shown up since, and if he and Jesse had been texting or calling each other, Markie wasn’t aware of it. Kyle never responded to the voice mail she left, though she didn’t blame him. She had tried to talk to Jesse about it, but he only said, “It’s whatever,” and changed the subject.
Usually, the new subject involved his going out with Trevor and his other new friends. His phone dinged constantly with texts, and he now had plans every day after school and most evenings after dinner. Plans of the unspecified, teenage type: “Nothing. Nowhere. No one. Just Trevor and the guys.”
It was like the name of a band—Trevor and the Guys. Or a single entity, many-headed, multilimbed: Trevorandtheguys. She didn’t know if Trevor was the sole person named because Jesse was closest to him, or because Trevor was the leader, or for some other reason, and she didn’t want to blow it by asking. Jesse was annoyed with Kyle for once, not with her, and while she took no pleasure in the former, she found great relief in the latter and wasn’t interested in having it change.
Plus, the boy was home when he was supposed to be, and he was getting his homework done. So she kept her questions to herself and said, “Sure, sounds good.” “See you at six.” “See you at ten.” “Have a great time.” And because work was going well, she tried to add, “Here, take a ten,” as often as she could.
Markie was rinsing her lunch dishes at the sink when she spotted Ronda alone in the side yard, no boss in sight. This was her chance to thank the woman for the Popsicle-stick house and the muffins, and she tore toward the fence to find the cook carrying Patty’s rickety old folding metal lawn chair out of the garage.
“Would you like one of these chairs?” Markie called, an arm extended behind her, toward her much more comfortable patio furniture. “It’s the least I can do after you sent that lovely house over.”
Ronda smiled broadly and lumbered over.
“Thank you for that, by the way,” Markie said as she waited for the woman to reach her. “I’m sorry I haven’t made it over before to thank you and to meet you. I was . . . well, there’s no excuse, really.” Finally, Ronda was at the fence, and Markie extended her hand. “I’m Markie. You’re Ronda, right? Or did I just thank the wrong person?”
“Nope, I’m the one,” Ronda said, and her voice was so quiet Markie had to lean closer to make out the words.