Chapter 4 Lorna Now #2
When he was done, he handed it to Lorna. She reviewed it.
Deer Dad miss lop said I could come to her house.
“ Lott ,” she corrected him. She wiggled her fingers at him. “Pencil, please.” He handed it over immediately. She wrote in the small space he’d left in the corner of the envelope:
Sir, I have asked your son to join me in apartment 1A for his safety. Miss Lott.
“Now let’s go put this on your door.” She opened her door, and she, the boy, and Agnes marched across the hall (well, Agnes trotted). Lorna shoved the envelope in the space where the door met the jamb, collected the boy’s things from the floor, and marched back.
This time, the kid dumped his backpack and drawings in the middle of the floor and didn’t hesitate to examine her figurines more closely. He gasped loudly. “Whales!” he cried with delight.
“Dolphins,” Lorna corrected, and picked up the bag of cookies Mrs. Foster had given him. “Come into the kitchen, please.”
He followed her and laughed when he entered the kitchen. “There’s more!” he said, pointing at the army of figurines lined up on the windowsill and open shelves.
“All right, already, so I have a few figurines.” She tried to turn him away from them, but that was impossible, as they were everywhere.
Her neck felt prickly hot. Was it shame?
She was hell-bent on changing the subject.
“What’s your name, anyway?” she asked as she helped him up onto a stool at the bar.
“Benjamin. That was my grandfather’s name. Not my dad’s dad, because his name is Joe. But my mom’s dad. My mom called me Benny. But my dad calls me Bean. Everyone calls me Bean. You can call me Bean too.”
“Okay, Bean.” She’d never seen anyone with him but his dad. “Where’s your mom?” she asked as she opened the fridge. Nothing was in there but a few containers of yogurt and some sparkling water.
“She’s dead,” the kid said matter-of-factly.
Lorna stopped what she was doing and turned to look at him. She half expected him to be joking. But Bean calmly returned her gaze. “Oh,” she said. “I... I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Do you have any juice?”
“I have milk. You want milk?”
“Yes!”
Was he ever not enthusiastic? She poured milk into a glass and set it before him. He drank thirstily.
“By the way,” she said as he pulled a Precious Moments figurine of a Christmas angel to him for inspection, “my mom is dead too.”
Bean paused to look at her.
Lorna nodded. She didn’t know why she needed to share that with him, but it felt important. “She had cancer. Was your mom sick?”
“Nope. A bus crashed into her.”
“Oh no,” Lorna said quickly, wincing in sympathy. “A car wreck, huh? Was anyone else hurt?”
“Not a car,” Bean said. He pushed the figurine away, then slugged enough milk to leave a mustache behind. “She was riding her bike. She liked to ride it a lot. My dad says she was a health butt.” He giggled.
“I think you mean a health nut.” Lorna opened the bag of cookies and handed one to him. “When did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I was six. I’m eight now.” He paused for a moment and looked off toward her living room. “I was six.”
She’d been much older when she lost her mother, but sometimes it still shocked her that she was without a mom.
Bean suddenly focused on her. “What’s your name?”
“Lorna.”
“Hi, Lorna!”
“Hi.”
He dunked part of the cookie into the glass of milk. “Guess what? I’m a Ranger Explorer. Did you know that?”
“I just learned your name, Bean, and therefore could not possibly know you are a Ranger Explorer. Moreover, I don’t even know what that is.” She settled onto a stool beside him.
“It’s for kids who want to be rangers and explorers.”
“Is that what you want to be? I can see how that sort of work would be rewarding, but I’d guess it’s a tough life. A lot of sleeping on the ground. And I bet it doesn’t pay as well as you think.”
He pressed his lips together in a perplexed frown. “But I’m going to discover the Arctic Circle,” he said with all seriousness.
“Too late. It’s already been discovered.” She helped herself to one of the broken cookies.
“But if I want to get all the badges, I have to discover something. Right now I’m working on my science badge.”
“Let me guess, you’re going to blow something up.”
Bean wrinkled his nose. “I can’t do that! Dad and I are going to build a catapult with a rocket. You can set it on fire, you know.”
“The catapult?”
“The rocket.”
That sounded like a major hazard to her. She imagined him attempting this flaming rocket catapult in the backyard and setting the whole house on fire. How closely did his dad watch this kid?
Bean dipped another cookie into the milk. “I like your dog.”
“Unnecessary to mention. It’s been well established.”
“Did you know Aggie can roll over?” he asked, sitting up taller.
“Her name is Agnes,” Lorna said.
“Watch.” He hopped off his stool and got down on his knees next to Agnes. “Roll over, Aggie! Roll over!”
Agnes looked at Bean adoringly, then rolled over.
And rolled over again, presenting her undercarriage.
Bean petted it with both hands. Then he put his face on her belly and rubbed it around.
“Good girl!” he praised her. He climbed back onto his stool to polish off the rest of the cookie pieces.
Lorna couldn’t help but reach across and brush an upsetting bit of dog hair from his cheek.
“My homeroom teacher is really pretty,” he said. “Her name is Mrs. Kimble. You know what I like to watch on TV with my dad? Gunsmoke . Dad says it’s a really old show, but I like it because they shoot each other a lot. Dad’s usually on his phone, though. Sometimes he’s asleep.”
She would be, too, faced with an endless round of Gunsmoke .
The kid nattered on, throwing out random Bean facts.
He had big toes. Diego was his best friend, and he had chickens.
His dad didn’t like bicycles anymore. He’d thought about being an astronaut but decided to be an explorer.
He could make his ears wiggle. Lorna insisted on seeing evidence of that, and he obliged.
He was a sweet and innocent kid. She vaguely remembered being sweet and innocent. Kristen was her best friend.
Until she wasn’t.
Then Callie was her best friend.
Until she wasn’t.
The cookies were gone, and Bean was working on his second glass of milk when there was a knock at Lorna’s door.
Agnes hopped to her feet and began to bark.
Bean raced for the door, Agnes on his heels, Lorna trying to get off her stool and beat them there.
She was too late—Bean threw open the door like he thought it might be Santa calling a little early. “Hi, Dad!”
“Hey, buddy. What are you doing here?” the man asked, ruffling his son’s hair.
“I forgot my key.”
“Again?”
Lorna reached the door and stood behind Bean, blocking his dad’s view into her apartment.
It was one thing to reveal her weirdness to a kid, quite another to reveal it to an adult.
Especially one who smiled like he did. And he kept smiling, like he didn’t see anything wrong.
Like he didn’t see anything wrong with her, which was.
.. nice. “Hey, thanks so much. Sorry about Bean. I think we should introduce ourselves since this keeps happening. I’m Seth. Seth Rooney.” He held out his hand.
Lorna considered it. Her palms were probably sweaty, but to ignore it would appear rude. She took his hand and gave it a good hard shake before quickly letting go. “I’m Lorna Lott. And that’s Agnes.”
“I’ve heard a lot about Agnes,” Seth said.
Remarkably, he was still smiling. It made Lorna feel strangely warm. Which in turn sprouted a tiny bit of panic in her. She didn’t know what to do with that warmth. Except gawk. She was so rusty when it came to exchanging pleasantries.
Bean ducked under her arm to grab his things, leaving at least a portion of her apartment exposed.
“He’s too young to be a latchkey kid,” she blurted, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
It made her curl into a ball on the inside.
She didn’t want to be unlikable. She wanted Seth to like her.
She expected shock. Indignation. At the very least, a retort to keep her nose to herself.
But Seth Rooney, by all outward appearances, was not offended. He actually chuckled. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said genially. “This was never the original plan, but we’re doing our best. We’re working on remembering important things, like our key. Right, Bean?”
“Right, Dad. Bye, Aggie!” Bean dipped down to rub Agnes behind her ears.
“Lorna, thanks so much,” Seth said. “I don’t know what I’d do without such good neighbors. I’m lucky to have found this place.”
He was right, he was lucky. She was the unlucky one here—he was living in her house.
“Nice to meet you officially,” he said, and put a hand on Bean’s shoulder, pushing him across the hall.
“Thanks,” Lorna said, like a dolt.
“Bye, Lorna!” Bean called. And then he turned to his dad and began to talk a blue streak as his dad opened their door. “Dad, she’s got all these little people in her room. Like, thousands .”
Not thousands , Lorna wanted to shout, to clear up any misconception that she was off her rocker.
She shut the door. Agnes whimpered.
“You’re really starting to hurt my feelings, you know.”
Agnes wagged her knob of a tail.
Lorna went into the kitchen and cleaned up the milk (spilled) and cookie crumbs (everywhere). She made herself a frozen dinner while Agnes dined on kibble. Her Precious Moments figurines stared at her while she ate at the bar. There really were a lot.
She put down her fork and glared back at the figurines. What liars they were. No one had moments like what they portrayed. They were all just someone’s sick idea of a happy fantasy.
Lorna suddenly hated them. She hated herself for having them.
She thought of Bean. He was six when his mother died. None of the mother-son figurines were true for him. She was thirty-eight when her mother died. None of the mother-daughter figurines were true for her either.
She thought of herself at six and had an overwhelming urge to cry. Again.
Good Lord, what was with the tears lately?