Chapter 4 Lorna Now
She had stopped hyperventilating by the time she pulled into the gravel square before her house, but feared she might have another go when she noticed that a cornice from the corner of the house had fallen and broken into pieces on the patchy lawn.
She pulled out her phone and made a note to call Mr. Contreras.
Normally she would call right away, but she was still feeling nauseated and perturbed that Micah Feelgood, or whatever his last name was, thought he could just start asking personal questions.
She would like to know what Kristen had to do with software sales.
She banged in through the front door and immediately stripped off her jacket, still hot, still perspiring.
She picked up her mail—two window replacement flyers and an official-looking State Farm envelope.
She was not insured by State Farm. She shoved them in her bag and turned to stride for her door.
Her mind was a million miles away, which was why she almost tripped over a long plastic piece of something on the floor.
She realized it was a toy racetrack that went down the stairs, looped three times, and then ended right here in front of the door, so that any unsuspecting person entering the building could be nailed in the shin by a small metal object.
The boy was sitting with his back to his apartment door, a book on his lap and a crumpled sheet of paper on top of the open page. His T-shirt had ridden up a little over his belly. He was beating a chewed-up pencil on the floor like a drumstick.
Across the hall, she could hear Agnes whimpering on the other side of her door.
Lorna stared at the kid. He said, “I have cookies. Do you want one? Miss Liz made them.”
“Who?”
“Miss Liz. She lives upstairs. She has a cat, and his name is Garfield, and he’s super fat.”
Miss Liz? Elizabeth Foster? The tenant in 2B? “What are you doing here?” Lorna asked.
“My homework.”
“I mean, what are you doing here on the floor? And what is all this?”
The kid looked confused by her questions. “There’s not a chair.”
Lorna sighed.
“That’s my racetrack. But my car went into that hole,” he said, pointing out a heretofore unseen hole in the baseboard. “You should have seen it fly!”
Agnes barked behind the door.
“Of course it did,” Lorna said impatiently. “Your loops are too big. It’s physics. Have you started physics yet?”
“What?”
She groaned. “Where is your dad?”
“He’s at work.”
What did this guy do that kept him always at work, leaving his son unattended? “Don’t you know that you can’t sit in the hall like this? It’s getting dark outside, and anyone could come along and snatch you.”
The kid looked even more confused. “But they’d have to know the code.”
“The code?”
“If someone was going to snatch me, they’d have to know the code to the door.”
“A minor detail,” she said with a sniff. “The point is, if they got the code, they could come in and snatch you while you eat cookies and pretend to do homework. Tell your dad that.”
She didn’t know if he heard her, because just then Martin came in, wearing his over-the-ear sound system. He saw the kid and slid the giant cups off his ears. “Bruh,” he said. “What up?” He held out his fist.
The kid bumped Martin’s fist with his. “Hi! Wanna play Mine-craft ?”
“Can’t right now, buddy,” Martin said. “Maybe later this week.” He glanced at Lorna standing there and shifted his gaze to the kid. “You okay?”
“Excuse me?” Lorna protested. “What do you think I’m going to do, steal his cookies?”
Martin shrugged. “They look pretty good.” He started up the stairs, then paused. “Hey, is this a Hot Wheels track? I haven’t seen one in ages!”
“Yeah,” the kid said, smiling proudly. “I lost my car. But when my dad comes home I can get some more and you can try it.”
“That would be fire,” Martin said. “But I’ve gotta bounce.” He jogged up the stairs to his apartment.
The kid picked up his cookies. “I like his locs. They’re cool.”
Lorna looked at him, confused.
The kid gestured to his own fine brown hair. “I’m going to have locs when I grow up.”
Lorna guessed he would not have them, given the texture of his hair, but she let him have that fantasy. “Okay, well... be careful out here. And you’d better pick up that track. It’s not allowed, you know.”
“It’s not?”
It wouldn’t be once she owned the place.
“Nope.” She turned and went to her apartment.
Agnes tried to get past her when she opened the door, but Lorna pushed her back and shut it behind them.
She was going to melt with anxiety, right here.
The authorities would find a giant puddle of sweat where she’d once stood.
A loud knock made her jump a foot in the air. Agnes started pawing the door.
Lorna looked around her apartment in a panic. No one ever came in here. She didn’t like anyone in here but her and Agnes.
She opened the door a crack, peering out with one eye while trying to contain Agnes. She expected to see one of her neighbors, but no one was eye level. She lowered her gaze.
“Hi,” the kid said.
“Hi.” She moved her leg so Agnes couldn’t get out.
“Can I use your bathroom?”
A bead of sweat dripped down her back. “Umm...”
“I really need to go,” the kid said, and began to dance around. Agnes barked again.
She did not want the kid in her apartment for a lot of reasons. But she wasn’t heartless. “Okay, but hurry. You’re about to give Agnes a heart attack.” She pulled open the door, and the kid came through, scurrying past the dog in the direction Lorna pointed.
When he emerged moments later, he was wiping his hands on his shorts.
“Hold on, kid,” Lorna said sternly. “Did you wash your hands?”
“I forgot.” He sprinted back and took longer to return this time. Finally, he came out, Agnes trotting alongside him, looking up at him with devotion.
The kid glanced around the central room. “Is this where you live?”
Before she could answer that this was of course where she lived—he’d just come in to use her bathroom, what did he think she was doing granting him access if she didn’t live here—the kid began to slowly turn a circle. “ Whoa ,” he said.
Lorna sighed. Her secret was out. She tried to imagine seeing her apartment through his eyes, the hundreds of figurines, the pink and white envelopes stacked on top of her desk.
“Look at all these .” The kid’s voice was full of awe. He began walking around her room, checking out her extensive collection of Precious Moments figurines. “How many do you have?” he asked, his hazel eyes wide with amazement. “Are there, like, a thousand ?”
Her face began to heat. “No, of course not.” Quite honestly, she didn’t know. But there were a lot. A lot .
“There’s, like, hundreds!” he said, excited.
“There are not hundreds,” she protested.
“Maybe two hundred. Or three. But not, like, hundreds .” She was being defensive with a child, but she hadn’t wanted him to see them to begin with.
That’s what cracked doors meant—no entry.
Not that it was his fault, but still. And not that he’d taken the slightest notice of her mood—he was marveling at the figurines that covered every shelf, every windowsill, every unused surface.
Sometimes she rearranged them, grouping them by animal versus person, by adult versus child.
But mostly she just looked at them. Mostly she pretended these were her memories.
Mostly she was just nuts, wasn’t she? Nothing said raving mad like seeing yourself through a child’s eyes.
“Why do you have so many?”
“Because I like them.”
He blinked, clearly unable to understand why anyone would like Precious Moments figurines this much. It was a legitimate question.
She felt the need to make him understand. “They’re happy moments. Get it? Look, here’s one of two kids walking two puppies. Happy, right?”
The kid looked where she indicated.
“And here’s one of a little boy like you reading a book in the grass.”
“What’s he reading?”
“I don’t know. It’s too small to tell. What about this one?” Lorna tried again, noting the hint of desperation in her voice. “This is two grandparents sitting outside their little camper with their cat. That’s kind of fun.”
“Yeah,” the kid said, nodding slowly. Lorna looked helplessly around her living area. The collection stank of hopelessness. She’d always been attracted to the figurines depicting moments of family happiness. Her grandmother had had a few, and she and Kristen used to play with them.
But... but she’d never experienced that kind of happiness herself. Not really. Except for a few years of her childhood that she’d spent here, in this house.
She felt something quake in her, sending an uncomfortable spasm up her spine.
Every one of these porcelain scenes represented a life she wished she’d had.
Couples and children and lovers and mothers and angels to watch over them all.
Moments she believed she’d deserved. And over the years, the urge to buy more of the moments she’d wished for had been too strong to resist.
Was she a bored spendthrift? Or someone who struggled with mental health? She could go either way.
“I don’t even have this many Pokémon cards.” The kid sounded excited. “Can I touch them?” he asked, already reaching.
“Just be careful,” Lorna said. “And listen, if you’re going to hang out here, you need to let your dad know where you are. He probably has strict rules about you just walking into strangers’ apartments.”
“You’re not a stranger. You’re a neighbor.”
“Stranger,” she insisted. She picked up the State Farm envelope and a pen and turned it over on her writing desk. “Write a note to your dad and tell him you are with Miss Lott in apartment 1A.”
The kid asked no questions. He bent over the envelope and began the laborious process of jotting down a note. He bore down on the pencil like he thought he had to carve his missive into the paper. His block letters got bigger and bigger as he neared the edge of the envelope.