Chapter 32 Lorna Now
Lorna bought chocolate chip cookie dough and showed Bean when he came home from school the next day. “Have you ranked chocolate chip cookies yet?”
Bean shook his head.
“You know that chocolate chip cookies are the backbone of America, don’t you?”
Bean nodded.
“I don’t see how you could possibly decide what you’re going to bake for your badge without a test run of cookies. Do you?” Bean shook his head.
“Then shall we make them?”
“Okay,” Bean said. The life was coming back into him.
“And when they are done, maybe we can invite Martin and Liz to have some too. In the backyard.” She’d begun to clear out the clutter of her Precious Moments figurines—those that did not occupy a place in Bean’s villages were now stored in boxes.
She didn’t need them anymore. But she still had so many that she wasn’t comfortable letting anyone get a glimpse of her apartment just yet.
After she helped him roll the cookie dough into balls and put them on the baking sheet, she set him to work making invitations for cookies in the backyard.
She thought today would be a good time to present him with his badge vest. She’d managed to sew on all the badges he had.
.. and it was completely covered. The kid was going to need a trench coat for badges at the rate he was going.
Last night, when she’d been sewing the last two badges, Mr. Contreras had called.
“Hello there, Ms. Moneybags. You getting that offer together?”
The man was the worst.
“I’m going to the bank this week.”
“Well, that’s good. I got an offer from a developer just this afternoon, and I’m ready to make a deal. You want to know the amount you have to beat?”
She didn’t, not really, but she was going to have to know sooner or later. “Is that even ethical?”
“What, you’ve got some morals you need to tend to?”
She rolled her eyes. “What’s the offer?”
The amount he quoted did not surprise her—Lorna had done her homework—but it did make her eyes water. “Got it,” she said.
Mr. Contreras chuckled. “I just bet you do. You still going to pursue this?”
How many times would he ask her? “Yes, Mr. Contreras. I will finalize the financing and my offer by Friday.”
“Well, lookee there,” Mr. Contreras said smugly. “I like how confident you sound. I like that in a woman.”
“Good for you. Is there anything else? I’m in the middle of something.”
He chuckled. She wanted to reach through the phone and smash his smug face. “I need to hear from you by Friday, Lorna.”
She drew a deep breath. “So you’ve said. Message received.” She hung up on him.
She did not sleep well last night. Friday was just a few days away.
Bean delivered his invitations, and when the cookies were ready, Martin and Liz joined them in the backyard.
Lorna had set up a table with a cloth over it and brought water in plastic bottles along with the cookies.
She was branching out. Some might even call this entertaining, despite how bare bones it was.
“Wow,” Liz said. “This reminds me of the way my mother used to invite friends over for tea.” She took a seat. “How are you, Lorna? You’re looking well rested.”
“I am?” Lorna wondered when she hadn’t looked well rested.
“This sabbatical must be working,” Liz added with a smile.
“You know? I think it is.”
“That hole is getting big,” Martin said. He was watching Bean and Aggie dig. They could not come to the backyard and not dig something.
Lorna saw that he was right. How interesting that she was not annoyed by it. She was almost amused by it. Maybe she’d turn the hole into a pond. It was just a hole after all.
The three of them chatted about the news around Austin—Martin was very excited about a new Torchy’s Tacos opening nearby. Lorna said she had never been to a Torchy’s. Martin made a show of falling out of his chair and Lorna, Liz, and Bean laughed.
Seth arrived soon after and walked outside, still shrugging out of his jacket. “Hey,” he said, and sat heavily in a lawn chair. He took three cookies, shoving one into his mouth, then seemed to realize what he was doing and blushed slightly. “Sorry. Long day.”
“What’s up, man?” Martin asked.
Seth shook his head. “This job is going to kill me.” His gaze found Bean, and he watched as Bean brushed dirt off Aggie’s coat.
“When I took this promotion, I had a wife. We knew it would be longer hours, but we thought we’d handle it well enough with the two of us.
” He rubbed his face with one hand. “The hours aren’t letting up, and the long hours are keeping me from my son. ”
“What are you saying?” Martin asked. “Are you going to change jobs?”
“I don’t know.” Seth sighed again, then bit off half another cookie.
“It’s just got me thinking in general.” He sat up a little and shook his head, like he was shaking a clutter of thoughts.
“By the way, I went back to the condos I told you about. They’ve got some finished models now.
They’re nice. They’ve got more square footage than any of our apartments. But they are a bit more expensive.”
“How much more?” Liz asked.
“A couple hundred a month. But without a list of things that need repair.”
They all took this news in. It seemed to Lorna that the four of them were silently contemplating what came next for them. She certainly was.
She was thinking about Bean and Seth, and about Martin and Liz.
She was thinking about this house, and what it was like when she was a child.
About the time she and Kristen found a litter of kittens under the house.
About when her grandparents had a party and the next morning, bowls of candy were still out.
She was thinking about what would happen to her fellow tenants.
How she hadn’t even thought of them in the beginning, when the only thing on her mind was getting Nana’s house back.
Would she regret buying this house from underneath them?
It was obvious Mr. Contreras was going to sell.
If not to her, then someone else. Could they blame her for being the one to buy it?
Would buying their homes out from under them become another burdensome bundle of guilt?
Would she be hunting them down in the years to come to apologize?
She could be their landlord, she realized. Buy the house and rent back to them. But would that change this thing between them that was feeling like friendship? She didn’t want to lose that. She didn’t want to be a landlord either.
She honestly didn’t know what she wanted or felt about this house anymore.
Her thoughts were beginning to confuse her.
She looked at Bean and Aggie. “Oh, right,” she said.
“I have something for Bean.” She got up and went into her apartment to get the vest. When she returned, she called Bean from the yard.
He and Aggie loped together to where the adults were seated, and Lorna presented the vest like a king’s robe. “Ta-da!”
Bean gasped. He’d seen some progress in the beginning, but he hadn’t seen it in several days. “These are all my badges!” he crowed as Lorna slipped it on him.
“Dude, you have to model it,” Martin said, and made him do a walk up and down.
“Do you want to know all the badges?” Bean asked, and then began to rattle them off, pointing to each one. The list was long. “Dad!” Bean said suddenly. “I can wear this to the science fair!”
“You can,” Seth said, and explained, “Bean has an entry in the science fair this week. Martin helped us. We’ve got a volcano.”
“Now that I’d like to see,” Liz said.
“You should all come,” Seth offered. “Wednesday at five at the school.”
As the school was a mere two blocks away, Liz immediately said she’d go.
“I’ll be there too,” Martin said. “Lorna?”
She couldn’t believe Martin was inviting her. “Me too.”
“We can walk together,” Liz said.
They talked about science fairs while Bean counted his badges.L orna realized she was going to miss this group. It wasn’t like they were besties, but she cared about them.
These people had indeed become her friends.
After the cookies were eaten, Lorna leashed up Aggie and drove to Peggy’s house. In her living room, Lorna presented the chewed piece of a dog toy to her.
“I don’t know what this is,” Peggy said, examining it.
“It’s a piece of a dog toy that Mrs. Tracy threw across the lawn.”
“Oh.” Peggy’s eyes widened.
Lorna filled her in on what happened. “I left her with the truth,” she said quietly. “I don’t think it makes a difference, but I wanted her to know.”
“Oh, I’m sure she will appreciate knowing the truth one day,” Peggy said kindly. “That must have been a hard one for you.”
“The hardest yet,” Lorna agreed.
Peggy reached over and patted her knee. “Well, my dear, you’ve done it.
You’ve completed the list your mother left with the trust. Which means the trust is yours now.
I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and sign some papers, but after that, it’s all yours.
” She walked to a buffet and picked up a blue file, which she then handed to Lorna.
“She would be so proud of you, Lolo. So proud. All the information you need to access the trust is in here.”
Lorna did not feel victorious. She felt like she should have done this a long time ago.
“Now promise me you will come and visit and bring that precious boy and this sweet dog,” she said, bending down to pet Aggie behind the ears.
Lorna smiled. “I will. And for the record, I’m not done yet.”
“Sure you are. We can get the list out and look again if you’d like.”
“No, I mean, I finished Mom’s list. But I haven’t finished what I started here.”
Peggy looked confused. “What do you mean? What did you start?”
“I...” Something snapped into place in Lorna. Some deep understanding she hadn’t known she possessed or, moreover, could even access. “I want to finish the long process of forgiveness. It’s part of my grief work.”
Peggy smiled. “That sounds important.”
Peggy probably thought she was referring to Kristen. But Lorna was talking about forgiving herself. And the only way to do that, to finally accept her grief and move on, was to apologize to her mother and her sister.