Chapter 2 #2
After work, she stopped by the store to purchase the wine Louise had requested, along with some chocolate chips. Louise may have wanted wine, but Zona needed a sugar fix, and she hadn’t had chocolate chip cookies in ages.
She hadn’t had much of anything other than dark chocolate and coffee and soup, which was easy to make, thanks to a sinking appetite.
All the foods she loved—pizza, Pad Thai, even fruit salads—had turned to ash in her mouth when she tried to eat them.
The divorce diet. It had taken off twenty pounds, ten of which her worried mother insisted she didn’t need to lose.
But the cookie craving was a sign that Zona’s taste buds were slowly coming back to life. Louise had a Mrs. Fields knock-off recipe, and she was already anticipating how one of those cookies would taste, warm from the oven. With milk. Cookies and milk.
Good grief, she was so reverting to childhood. Living with Mom, cookies and milk—what next, a curfew? Snort. No need for one of those. Zona no longer had a life.
She parked her new used car in the driveway—between Louise’s car and Zona’s boxes and the mattress and bed frame stacked against the wall in the garage there was no room for Zona’s car—grabbed her grocery bag and got out.
Her mother’s modern Spanish-style home with its arched windows and covered front porch beckoned her like the proverbial port in a storm. Which was exactly what it had become.
She couldn’t help but notice that the new neighbor her mother had mentioned had just pulled his truck into his driveway. That was where it stopped. His garage was probably full of boxes, too.
She half raised her hand to wave hello to him as he got out and then realized he wouldn’t see her. That was just as well. The better to ogle that broad-shouldered, Jack Reacher body, though she had learned the hard way that male bodies, no matter how sturdy they looked, always housed trouble.
He was marching up his front walk, busy talking on his cell phone. More like growling, really.
She understood the growling into the phone thing. She’d done her share of that with Gary. Who was making this chunk of hunk growl?
Who cared? She had enough problems on her own plate. She didn’t need to be looking over at anyone else’s.
“Good. You’re home,” Louise greeted her when she walked into the kitchen.
Her mother looked none the worse for wear, not a strand out of place on her carefully dyed California-blond bobbed hair.
If there’d been any crying and carrying on, there was no sign of it as the black eyeliner and mascara that Louise favored were still intact.
Wearing a stylish sleeveless top and hip-hugging jeans, Louise Hartman looked like the kind of social influencer who would inspire seniors and garner insults from younger women insisting she dress her age and give up those jeans and that cute little top.
“You’re only as old as you think you are,” she liked to say. Which kept her firmly in her forties right along with Zona—instead of her sixties. And that was fine with Zona. Louise had had her share of earthquakes, but she’d never let them keep her down. She was Zona’s hero.
“I’ve got dinner almost ready,” she said from where she stood at the counter, tossing sprouts into a large red Fiestaware bowl. “Asian chicken salad and leftover muffins from yesterday.”
“Sounds great,” said Zona. “And I got chocolate chips for cookies.”
“Cookies. That sounds like a good idea. Maybe we can take some to our new neighbor,” Louise suggested.
Zona knew an ulterior motive when she heard one. “Mom, I don’t need to start getting friendly with the next-door neighbor.”
“He doesn’t appear to be married. And he is gorgeous.”
That he was. The man was a hormone fire-starter. But Zona didn’t need her hormones catching fire. In fact, her hormones needed to be put on ice. Permanently.
“He may be gorgeous, but I don’t want to share my cookies.”
“It’s been two years since your divorce. The dust has finally settled. You could move on,” said Louise.
“From the frying pan into the fire? Mom, I’ve got my hands full trying to get financially healthy. I don’t need to add relationship angst to that.”
“I bet he’s doing okay financially,” said Louise.
“Betting is what got me into this mess. And anyway, with my track record, no one would be betting on me.” Ugh.
Louise shrugged. “You don’t want to stay single forever. And you know what they say. The third time’s the charm.”
“They say a lot of things. And you know what else they say? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’m done being duped. Anyway, I’m not sure he’s in the market. He was on the phone with somebody when he got out of his truck just now, and that somebody was getting an earful.”
“Well, there you go. What he needs is a good woman.”
“You don’t really want to see me getting together with someone after what happened with Gary, do you?”
“I want to see you getting together with someone who will erase what happened with Gary from your heart,” Louise said. “There are still good men out there. Like your father was.”
“Yes, and there are unicorns living in Echo Park,” said Zona.
“I wonder what would have happened if your father and I had stayed in Florida,” Louise mused later as she helped Zona with the cookies. “Your life might have turned out so different if you’d grown up there.”
“Dad might not have had a job,” Zona suggested. Her father had done well working in California as an urban planner.
“You wouldn’t have met Luke,” Louise said.
“Or had Bree.”
“There’s proof that something good can come out of anything.” Louise brightened. “So, who knows what good will come out of all of this?”
“Maybe I’ll write a memoir and become famous?”
They both laughed at that. Even though she liked to read, Zona was not a writer.
What was she? Good with kids. (She’d always wished she and Gary had been able to have a couple.
Now that failure looked like a blessing in disguise.) Maybe she should have become a teacher.
Although she’d never been very good at helping Bree with her homework.
She searched around her mind and, as she had before, she didn’t find any spectacular talent that made her special.
She liked to hike, she liked to read. She enjoyed being in the kitchen, but she wasn’t clever enough to make it on any TV cooking competition.
She could sing, but she didn’t have the voice of a superstar.
She was just an ordinary woman, one who had a lovely, smart, and very bitter daughter.
Bree. What a mess Gary had made in her head. Like Zona, Bree had loved him. He’d spent more time with Bree when she was growing up than her real dad ever had. It made his betrayal all the worse.
There it was again, another verse of the lame song, playing in Zona’s brain. She had to stop that. She needed to focus on the future.
She’d found Angel Ram, a finance guru who had an entertaining and informative money management podcast, and had checked out her latest book from the library.
She was taking Angel’s words to heart. “Debt is an ugly beast. Throw that beast off you. Get going and get working!” Angel liked to say.
“Your past is not your future. Change your attitude now. Change your habits now. Tomorrow will thank you.”
Angel Ram was right. Zona had bucked that beast off her and she was rebuilding. Her tomorrows would be better. She would make sure of it. After all, she had chocolate.
She scooped up four cookies from the cooling rack, put them on a plate, and set the plate on the kitchen table. Then she got out the milk.
“Cookies and milk,” Louise said happily as Zona poured them each a glass. “That always brings back such happy memories of my childhood.”
“Mine, too,” Zona said and smiled at her.
Louise lifted her glass. “Here’s to better times ahead and making better memories.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Zona, and the ground under the house gave a little quiver.
Darling whimpered and Louise said weakly, “Oh, I don’t like the timing of that.”
Zona grabbed a cookie. “It’s only an aftershock, Mom. Not a cosmic warning.”
Right? Right.