Chapter 7
M arco talked about Ben and his geode all afternoon as they finished the floral deliveries, and most of the way back to the flower shop. His non-stop chatter filled the van, making her smile.
Did she know what a geode was? Ben was an expert at finding geodes, and he’d told Marco all the ways to spot them. Could they take rocks they found outside to the rock shop to get them sawed in half? Maybe they could cut them in half at home with the toolkit.
Marco hadn’t been so animated in a long time. He held up the rock Ben had given him, demonstrating how the two halves fit together for her to admire in the rearview mirror.
“From the outside, it j-just looks like an ordinary rock,” he told her.
“It absolutely does.”
“And you never know what’s going to be inside. It could be any color, not just purple, like this one. Or there might be nothing inside.”
“It must be so exciting to cut them open.” Nell smiled over her shoulder at him.
“We have to try it. Can we look for rocks tomorrow at the park?”
“I have work tomorrow, but maybe Sunday.” Tomorrow she had her weekly shift at the coffee shop.
“Okay. And when we find one, we have to show it to Ben. I know we’ll find at least one.”
“Well … I can’t promise that.”
“Why not?” Marco demanded, his voice turning stubborn.
“Today was the last time he planned to come with me. He was only helping deliver the flowers he’d sent to the patients at his clinic. But now we’re all done. Ben is very busy, and so are we, so we might not see him again.”
“But you said he needed help. You said he was shy, and he needed practice with going outside of his house.”
“I did say that.” His memory was too good. She’d always told him as much of the truth as she could. And he always remembered, and brought it up at the worst times.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “W-why can’t we keep helping him? He looked sad when he left.”
“I don’t think he wants any more help right now. He has a lot to think about.”
But Ben had looked sad when he’d said goodbye. She wouldn’t examine too closely the answering emotion that had swelled inside her, watching him walk up his sidewalk alone, because it was pointless to feel anything more for him. They’d connected, helped each other out, and now their time together was over. She’d paid him back for the enormous favor he’d done her, and that was that.
Marco huffed out a loud sigh and looked out the window.
“If we find a geode, we have to show it to him,” he repeated.
“We’ll see. Maybe.”
Marco went silent for the last stretch of the drive, showing her he was mad at her by putting his headphones back on and twisting his whole body in the booster seat to face the side door. He looked about as uncomfortable as she felt. Uncomfortable and off balance.
Something had changed inside her since the first delivery day with Ben. The landscape had shifted and she’d seen her life from a different angle, like an optical illusion concealing an image right in front of her. Now there was no unseeing it.
She’d been putting one foot in front of the other for so long after Kurt left, just trying to survive. But she’d wanted other things before. The eighteen year-old version of herself had been so sure of her path.
Her sketchbooks full of fantastical garden designs lived in boxes in her storage closet, but they also still lived inside her brain. They were still real, even though college was out of reach for her now. The money alone, not to mention the course schedule, made it an impossible dream.
But the fact she was even thinking about it—that was new. Those old desires had been buried deep. And then Ben had come along and cracked her open like an acorn, and now the memories wouldn’t go back to sleep.
That had to be why it had been so difficult to say goodbye to him. For all his formal, reserved exterior, he’d seen inside her, to the secrets she kept hidden even from herself.
And he’d looked sad to leave. Sad and aloof, untouchable as the first day they’d met. But she had touched him. She’d threaded her arm through his, felt the warm muscle under the fine wool of his jacket. Under the formalwear, he was just a man. A man she didn’t need anything else from, because she’d never need a man again.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t start making some changes now.
Back at Tillie’s, she slammed the van door shut with too much force, causing Marco to pull off his headphones and stare at her. She jogged around to his side of the van and opened the door.
“Come on, we’re going inside,” she told him.
His forehead scrunched up. “But I usually wait out here.”
“Not today.”
She’d finished all the deliveries, and she needed to ask Amy about her commission payment. And if Amy found out she’d had Marco along with her in the van again today, so be it. She hadn’t been fired last time.
Let Amy know how hard she had to work to balance everything. This was her real life, and she wouldn’t hide it any more, like it was something to be ashamed of.
She waved at Jackie, who was working the front counter today, grabbed Marco’s hand, and slid behind the front desk into the back hallway. The smell of flowers and damp greenery filled the air. She tapped on the door of Amy’s office, where her boss sat at her desk, working on her computer. Marco stood behind her, half hidden in the doorway.
Nell stuck her head in the door. “Just dropping the van keys off. We’re all done with the deliveries.”
“Great news. Come on in.” Amy swiveled around in her office chair just as Nell opened the door all the way, revealing Marco. Amy’s eyes flicked between her and her son, and her brows raised, but she didn’t say anything.
“He didn’t have school today. Inservice.” Nell squared her shoulders, ready for whatever criticism Amy wanted to throw her way.
“It’s fine,” Amy said, her tone clipped with what could be irritation, or maybe it was just her usual short manners.
Nell cleared her throat. “Anyway. I wanted to ask you about my commission. If I could possibly have the money today, that would be great.”
“Of course. I’ll get you a check.” Amy pulled open the top desk drawer and took out the checkbook.
Her hand hesitated over the book, pen in mid-air. “Thank you for bringing in this sale, by the way. It was a big boost for us this quarter.”
“I didn’t do much. I did him a favor, and I guess this was his way of paying me back.”
“Well, this is a nice payment.” Amy handed her the check, and her heart did a little flip at the number on it.
Her boss paused for a moment before speaking again.
“Nell. When he called me that first day, he said you helped him on a difficult day. Did he mean it was a difficult day for him, or for you?”
Nell gave a nervous little laugh. “I think we’d both had a difficult day. I got an eviction notice that morning, and Marco got sick. I wasn’t at my best. I’m sorry for breaking your rules, though.”
Amy frowned and shoved a hand through her short hair. “No, I’ve been thinking a lot since that day. And maybe the rules need to change. I didn’t think before about how things must be for you, as a single mom, and I should have. So I want you to know, you can bring Marco along with you, anytime you need to.”
“Really? That’s amazing. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much.” Nell’s hand squeezed Marco’s, probably a bit too tightly, and he plastered his torso to her leg, something he only did when he was feeling uncertain.
Amy gave a short nod. “I want this job to work for you. You’re a good employee, and I’m trying to be … more flexible. My wife says I’m too much of a hardass.” Her mouth twisted up in a half smile.
“Oh, well I …” Nell paused, unwilling to confirm Amy’s wife’s opinion, but she sent the woman silent thanks. “This will help me out so much. Thank you, again. ”
“Good.” Amy gave a sharp nod and went back to her desk, clearly uncomfortable with the emotion in the room. “Good. Have a good weekend, then. And you too, Marco.” She started typing again, dismissing them.
Nell backed out of the doorway and shut the door. She dropped the keys to the delivery van on their usual hook by the front desk and patted her pocket, feeling for the check. The bell on the door jingled on the way out.
“She wasn’t mad.” Marco said, as they crossed the parking lot to her car.
“She really wasn’t.” Nell put a hand on his shoulder. “Lucky us.”
* * *
That night, after boxed macaroni and cheese—the only kind Marco would eat—they watched a documentary together. Marco had forgotten he was mad at her. Or more likely, he was saving up his arguments until later, to be used at bedtime. No doubt he’d chosen this show about rock formations on purpose.
They sat on the couch together, a bowl of trail mix between them, with Marco’s body folded in half, knees at his chest. One by one, he picked out all the chocolate chips from the bowl and ate them.
“It’s a good thing I love you so much, or I’d be mad you left me with all the raisins,” she told him.
“But you like raisins, and I don’t.” He sifted through the bowl, finding more pieces of chocolate.
“I like chocolate, too.”
“I’ll share the chocolate with you if you put more in the bowl. I promise.” He gave her a devious grin, then turned his gaze back to the screen. “You’re missing the volcano eruption. The lava is made of melted rock.”
“It’s pretty amazing.”
“If you put a stick in the lava, it’d catch on fire in two seconds.”
“I bet you’re right.”
“Too bad there’s no volcanoes in Missouri.” He sighed and ate another handful of chocolate.
“I always thought that was a positive thing.” She handed him a paper towel, hoping to avoid melted chocolate from his hands making it onto the couch upholstery.
After the show, she got him into the bath. His weekly hair wash day added forty minutes to their bedtime routine, but she loved finger-coiling his curls one by one so they dried in perfect ringlets. Since adopting her biracial son, whose birth mom was Puerto Rican and his dad white, she’d tested dozens of curl products until she found the ones his hair liked.
After he was tucked into bed, she turned on his star projector night light, and he tucked his stuffed brontosaurus under his left arm.
“Tomorrow I’m going to Carla’s house, right?” he asked. Their neighbor watched him on the weekend days Nell worked at the coffee shop, in exchange for Nell helping clean her house a few hours a week.
“That’s right. I’m making everyone in the city their coffee tomorrow morning.” She reached out and smoothed the hair away from his forehead. How much longer would he let her do that? “But Sunday is our day together this weekend.”
“And we’ll go to the park and look for rocks.” His brown eyes reflected the dim light of the night light as they searched her face.
“Yes. We can go Sunday.”
“We’re going to find a geode,” he said, a hundred percent sure of the fact.
They probably wouldn’t find a geode. He’d have to be disappointed by life sooner or later, but holding off that disappointment as long as possible for him was part of her job as a mom.
“I hope you’re right. And goodnight.”
“Goodnight. We’ll find one. You’ll see.” He turned over on his side and pulled the covers up to his chin.
Nell slipped out of the room, leaving his door cracked open. Downstairs, she folded two loads of laundry, loaded the dishwasher, and swept the cracked linoleum of her kitchen floor. Her landlord should replace the floor soon, but he wouldn’t.
She moved on to her evening plant care routine. She added one ice cube to each orchid pot, so the plants would receive a slow drip of water, then removed dead leaves from her philodendrons and misted them with water. The expensive bird’s nest fern she’d brought home from the flower shop was still drooping, though. Jackie had over-watered the sensitive plant until it almost died. Nell had brought it home like a stray cat, but she’d return it to the shop when it recovered.
“Come on, Oscar,” she told the plant. “Let’s try you by the other window and see if that’s better.” She carried the fern from the dining room to the living room and set it on the windowsill. Lifting the edges of the plant, she checked the bottom of the pot, where she’d added some gravel to help the soil drain.
Exhaustion from the long day caught up with her and she sank onto the couch. She dug through her purse for the check from Amy and deposited it into her bank account using her bank app. Then she wrote out a check for next month’s rent and tucked it into her wallet. She’d give it to Eddy tomorrow morning.
She’d never been ahead on rent payments. Not once in six years. For now, at least, she and Marco were safe. Thanks to Ben.
She’d put off texting him ever since they’d gotten home, but she’d said she would let him know when they’d finished the deliveries. She pulled up his name in her contacts, opened a message thread, and typed a text. She typed and then deleted a smiley face emoji. He was probably one of those people who used perfect grammar and punctuation in all his texts.
Her thumb hovered over the send button. Was 10:00 p.m. too late to text? Before she could analyze it any more, she hit send.
Deliveries all finished this afternoon .
Right away, three dots appeared on the screen. They flashed and disappeared several times. After a minute, she received a short reply.
Glad to hear it .
Thank you for the geode you gave Marco. He loves it.
He’s very welcome.
She watched the open message thread until the phone screen went black, then set the device on the couch cushion next to her.
That rock probably meant nothing to Ben. He’d brought it along on a whim to show her son. It didn’t mean anything, and she shouldn’t feel any way about it at all—
Her phone buzzed with another text.
Do you want to see my clinic? I’d like to show it to you. Tomorrow, maybe?
Nell stared at the message for a moment before typing her reply. Did she want to see him again, not to pay off her debt to him, but just because she wanted to? Yes, she did.
I’d like to see it. You haven’t been there in person for a while, right?
No. But I’m ready to go back. If you wouldn’t mind driving one more time?
It wasn’t a date. It was just her giving him a ride, like she’d been doing all week. It didn’t mean anything, and maybe she’d get some closure, so she could stop thinking about how unhappy he’d looked when she dropped him off this afternoon.
I have to work tomorrow . But I could pick you up after. 4:00?
4:00 will work. Thank you for driving.
It’s nothing.
I told you to stop saying that.
She smiled at her phone before typing her reply.
OK. It’s not nothing. It is definitely something.
Better. Goodnight, Nell. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Goodnight.
She set down the phone and pressed a hand to her sternum, where her pulse raced. Not nothing. Definitely something. The words repeated on a loop in her mind the rest of the evening.