Chapter 17 Lorna Now
Bean arrived home from school the next afternoon in a red-and-white-striped T-shirt and brown cargo shorts, like some cartoon character. The only thing missing was a beanie with the propeller on top. It was a sad fact the boy had no mother to gently guide him into dressing less like a caricature.
Not that Lorna had any idea how to guide him, given her own problem with selecting clothes.
She’d spent the better part of the day fretting about this evening and trying on different outfits.
No matter what she put on, she looked ridiculous, like a nineteenth-century nanny come to drag a child away to boarding school.
She finally settled on black slacks and a white shirt. She put her hair in a low messy bun and tied a scarf around her neck. She thought maybe it looked jaunty and not stuffy. No sartorial magic was going to transform her wardrobe or hair on such short notice.
Bean was full of news about Aiden, a kid in his class who liked to wear silly hats to school and then make the teachers chase him. “He had to go to the principal’s office,” Bean reported with wide eyes.
Lorna, with one of her own eyes on the clock as it slowly ticked its way to five, said, “He sounds like a delinquent in the making.”
“What’s that?”
“Someone who is always going to be trouble.”
Bean laughed. “Aiden is always in trouble.”
“Guess what, Bean?” Lorna finally blurted, unable to contain her news another moment. “My friend said I could come over today.”
Bean gasped and clapped his hands over his mouth. “Your best friend?”
“Yes, Callie.”
“She wants to be friends again?”
“I don’t know yet. She may want to tell me to my face that she hates me. But at least I’ll know, right?”
“Right,” Bean emphatically agreed.
Lorna pressed a hand to her belly and laughed self-consciously. “I’m so nervous. Is that crazy?”
“Dad says if I’m nervous, then probably my friends are nervous, too, so she’s probably nervous too.”
Seth was a gold mine of advice, apparently.
She wondered if Callie was nervous. Lorna imagined her looking the same, maybe her hair in braids, with cannons in her windows to blast Lorna out of her life once and for all.
Which was an absurd thing to imagine. Callie was a grown woman.
“She may be nervous, but I bet she doesn’t feel queasy like I do. ”
“Okay, if you feel like you’re going to throw up in the car, open your door and lean over,” Bean instructed her. “I had to do that once after Grandpa took me to SeaWorld. He said I ate too much junk. Did you eat too much junk today?”
Lorna shook her head. She swallowed down another swell of nausea.
She should not have mentioned it, because now she felt like she might throw up.
What were these nerves? Why was she such a wreck?
This wasn’t a broken marriage or a broken law.
She made sales pitches to bigwigs and head honchos all the time and never felt anything but annoyed that they’d kept her waiting.
This was a childhood friend she wanted to apologize to.
There should not be so much anxiety about it.
And yet she was filled with it. She pressed both hands against her belly.
“You can always tell if you’re sad or scared because something hurts,” Bean informed her. “But if you’re happy, you feel kind of floaty, and nothing hurts. So be happy.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in, but she took her eyes off the clock, which had just hit five, and looked at Bean. “What are you, like, a miniature Eckhart Tolle or something?”
Bean’s brow wrinkled. “Is that a candy bar? I’m not a candy bar. But if I were a candy bar, I’d want to be a KitKat.”
“Smart,” she agreed.
Her phone rang, startling them both. She picked it up. “Hello?”
“Lorna, hi. It’s Seth.”
Seth, she noticed, sounded breathless and her anxiety ratcheted. Breathless on the phone was never good. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m going to be late—”
“No, no,” Lorna interrupted before he could finish. “You can’t be late today! I have an appointment at six with someone. In Pflugerville. I should be leaving now, Seth. This is really important.”
“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry,” Seth said again. “We’ve had a system failure, and I need at least another hour. Maybe Liz—”
“I’ll take him with me,” Lorna said abruptly, and looked at Bean for approval. He nodded enthusiastically and then started to jiggle his hips like he was dancing. Or running. She wasn’t sure.
“Take him? No, I don’t think that is a good idea. I don’t know where you’re going or who you’ll be with. I’d rather you give me a minute to track down Liz and ask her to look after him.”
“I don’t have time for you to track her down and I can’t miss this meeting. I’ve been waiting for it for thirty years.”
“What? I don’t—”
“Thirty years, Seth!” she said, louder. “It will be fine, really. It’s a house. An old friend. No drugs, no parties, no guns.” She sincerely hoped that was true.
There was a pause. She sounded crazed, and not in a good way. “I’m not sure what any of that means, but... but let me talk to Bean, okay?”
“Make it quick.” She handed the phone to the kid.
Bean listened as his dad presumably explained his predicament.
Lorna could only hear Bean’s answers, which were “Yes,” “Yes,” “Uh-huh,” and then “It’s her best friend, Dad,” as if that were an obvious fact being overlooked.
And then he listened. For what seemed forever to Lorna, but at last he said, “Okay,” and handed the phone back to her.
Lorna put the phone to her ear. “Seth?”
“Okay,” he said. “He can go. I’m so sorry, Lorna. I know this is a huge imposition, but I’m between a rock and a hard place here.”
Lorna glanced at the clock. “No offense, but can you give me your apologies later? We’ve got to go. I can’t be late.”
“Sure, and tha—”
Lorna clicked off in a mild state of alarm.
She had enough to deal with just in her own head—her terror at being rejected by Callie, her sudden and vicious determination that her memories were all wrong, the uncertainty of what she would say and if she could say it without pissing anyone off—and she had not counted on a kid tagging along.
But she would not miss this shot. “Okay, dude, we gotta jet, and you’re riding shotgun,” she said. “Bathroom?”
“Nope.”
“Aggie needs a treat.”
“On it,” he said, and headed for the pantry.
“Okay.” Was she missing anything? She was too worked up now to think clearly, especially with a literal clock ticking next to her head.
It had taken a monumental effort for her to get here, so the idea that a slight ripple to her plans could knock her off course was not only unfathomable but unacceptable.
She remembered something and hurried to the desk with the stack of unopened letters.
She pulled open a drawer and grabbed a small homemade bracelet, put it in her purse, and said to Bean, “Ready?”
“I have to get my Ranger Explorer backpack. Then I’ll be super ready,” he assured her, as if they were off to save the world.