Chapter 2 Lorna Now #2
Well, that was easier said than done, and that was assuming she even wanted the life Mr. Contreras had prescribed.
But she couldn’t care less whether he underestimated her—she’d been saving like mad, pushing her team to the brink of revolt just so she could hit the highest sales mark.
Thanks to her drive, everyone had made more money, and she was a shoo-in for senior vice president and its signing bonus and better salary, which, added to her savings, would be enough for a down payment on the house. It was a win-win-win-win-win.
Or it had been, until the egregious events of today.
She felt sick again. In a dull grip of panic. And furious, like she could pick up her car and hurl it down the street.
They couldn’t just get rid of her, could they?
For the mistake of attaching a private letter to a work email?
That attachment was for Kristen! Which was doubly frustrating because Kristen would never read the letter.
Mostly because Lorna would never send it to her sister in Florida, because she and Kristen were on a break just now.
Anyway, if that was how they were going to treat her, their top salesperson , then she should just find another job. That would show them. Way to chase off your best talent, Driskill Workflow Solutions.
Or... Or. She could at least consider meeting the conditions of the trust. But only as a last resort.
Her head was beginning to pound with the tension invading every inch of her body. She got out of her car and walked stiffly to the door. As she neared the entry, she could hear the thud of something hitting the house over and over.
Where once there had been a double door with twin sidelights, there was now a single door with reinforced glass and a keypad entry. She punched in the code and entered the building as another thud rattled the old house.
A stack of mail had been strewn across the console just inside the entry.
Removal of the original door with its mail slot had necessitated the erection of a mailbox on the side of the house with four separate compartments.
But, in the inimitable reasoning of the US Postal Service, they’d all been keyed the same.
It had become the habit of the residents to empty all four boxes and dump the mail on the table for everyone to sort through.
Lorna considered this a security breach of the highest order, but as Martin from upstairs had once pointed out, if someone broke in and stole all the offers for free window replacement estimates, no one would be harmed.
She found only two items of mail for her—both junk—and moved on to her apartment door at the base of the stairs: 1A, as it should be.
She stuck her key in the lock just as Martin came bounding down the stairs with a backpack slung over his shoulder, his over-the-ear headphones on his head.
The red earpads made him look like he was wearing apples.
“Hey, Lorna,” he said as he sailed past her.
“Martin,” she said crisply. She had not yet registered her complaint about his marching band rehearsals or whatever was going on upstairs at night, but she liked to give advance notice of her displeasure.
Not that Martin noticed—he was out the door before she could ask him if he wanted to know what was bothering her.
There was that thudding again.
She opened the door to her apartment and stepped inside, placing her bag on the chair at her small writing desk. “Agnes?” Usually her dog was waiting for her at the door, dancing around on her short little corgi legs. But the apartment was still.
She walked through her apartment looking for her dog.
There weren’t many places to look: Her space had been partitioned into a living and small kitchen area, a bedroom, and the intolerable bathroom.
As she was on the ground floor, she also had an exit to the backyard with a dog door.
Mr. Contreras had tried to charge her extra for that access, but Lorna had countered that the fact her bathroom was a closet ought to bring the price down.
In the end, he did not raise her rent, and Agnes was free to come and go as she pleased while Lorna was at work.
The large backyard was available to all the residents, but until a couple of months ago, Lorna and Agnes were the only ones who ever used it. It was overgrown in some places, bare in others. The flower beds grew nothing but weeds now.
But then a kid had moved in across the hall from her. On the day he and his dad moved in, the kid had spotted her—or rather, Agnes—when they’d come back from a walk. “I like your dog!” he shouted at her from across the lawn.
Of course he liked her dog— everyone liked her dog. With a curt nod of acknowledgment, Lorna had kept walking.
“Can I pet it?” he shouted.
Lorna stopped walking. She did not want to stand in the sun and humor the kid, but she also didn’t want to seem like a witch. “It’s not an it; it’s a her.”
The boy took that as a yes and came charging toward them. His dad, laden with two boxes, was apparently perfectly fine with his son petting a stranger’s dog. He’d barely even registered them before disappearing inside.
The kid had round cheeks, blue eyes, and reddish-brown hair that was in desperate need of a comb. Sweat poured off him—not that he seemed to notice. She thought he was seven or eight, overweight in a way that made her ache for him because she knew from personal experience how cruel kids could be.
As he squatted down next to Agnes, his face split with a broad smile. “I love dogs. They are my favorite animal. But also sloths are my favorite because they’re really cool.”
“Sloths?” Lorna had recoiled slightly. “Sloths are no comparison to dogs, sir.”
“What’s your dog’s name?”
“Agnes.”
“Hi, Agnes. Hiii ,” he said, scratching her behind the ears.
Agnes lapped up the attention like warm milk, her bobbed tail wagging hard. The kid laughed at her eagerness. Then the man came out and yelled and the kid got up. “Bye!” He ran off.
Since that day, the kid was always in the yard, and if he was in the back, Agnes was with him. Agnes adored him.
Lorna suspected Little Mr. Sunshine was responsible for the thudding and went to the back door.
She turned the lock and then stepped out onto her small landing.
Just as she did, a large object whizzed past her head, slammed into the side of the house, and bounced up and off again.
She’d almost been decapitated by a soccer ball.
“Sorry!” the kid called out as he and Agnes chased after the ball.
“You should look where you’re kicking,” Lorna said irritably, but the kid was too far away to hear. “Agnes, come!”
Agnes ignored her. The kid kicked the ball again, this time sending it to the back of the lawn.
“Fine.” Lorna walked down the few rickety steps onto the lawn, then followed the path that led to the creek.
There used to be pavers here, but they were long gone.
She could feel the heels of her sensible pumps sinking into the loamy dirt and wished she’d thought to take them off.
The kid was squatting in the grass, looking down at something.
And Agnes was beside him, digging furiously, kicking up dirt that landed on Lorna’s pant legs until she thought to move.
That’s when she noticed a very big hole in a bald patch of the grass.
“What’s this?” she demanded, gesturing wildly to the hole.
The kid pulled the soccer ball out of it and looked up at her, blinking in the sun. “It’s a hole.”
“I see that it is obviously a hole, but what is it doing here? Agnes, stop that,” she commanded.
Agnes stopped for a moment, turned her dirt-covered snout to look at Lorna, then gleefully resumed.
“Aggie and I dug it today.”
“Why?”
He examined the hole as if searching for the answer there. Honestly! Like this house wasn’t falling around them as it was. The lawn was so unkempt that a boy could see it and believe it the best place for a hole.
“Do you have a shovel?” Lorna asked, making a mental note of the complaint she’d submit to Mr. Contreras. Children should not have shovels to dig holes for no apparent reason.
“The shovel is over there,” the kid said, pointing to a small equipment shed that was leaning slightly to the left.
And there was the shovel, propped up against the wall.
So typical of the yard crew—they left out equipment that the tenants’ rent paid for to be stolen or taken up by young boys with bad ideas.
“But I found this really cool metal thingy.” The kid dropped the ball and looked around the grass, then triumphantly produced a green metal stake, the sort that plastic fencing was tied to.
Lorna stared at it. Then she stared at his red, sweaty face. “You found this and thought, I’ll just dig a massive hole ?”
“It’s really deep,” he said proudly.
“So deep someone could fall into it and break a leg.” Not to mention it was just another thing she would have to repair when she got the house back.
“Aggie fell in, and she didn’t break any of her legs.”
“Is that right?” Lorna asked, her hands going to her hips. “Well, first of all, her name is Agnes. Second, her legs are so short they are nearly impossible to break.” She marched over to the shed and grabbed the shovel before Boy Genius got any more ideas.
“I forgot her name. Sorry, Aggie,” the boy said to the dog, and leaned down to pet her head. Agnes wiggled closer to him. Traitor.
“Where is your father?” Lorna demanded as she came back with the shovel.
“He’s at his job. Sometimes his job lets him come get me at school. But most of the time I ride the bus. I get off at the corner and I walk home and wait for my dad. Kenzie wanted me to come home with her one time, but Dad said I have to have permission.”
“Okay, well, that’s a lot of information I won’t necessarily retain,” Lorna said. “Second, you shouldn’t be digging deep holes for people to fall into and break their ankles.”
“Okay,” he said.