Lock and Key (20 page)

“Nate,” I finished for her.

“Yeah!” She laughed again, too loudly, and I got another whiff of smoke, even stronger this time. Like I hadn’t spent ages teaching her about the masking ability of breath mints. “And here I am. It all worked out in the end.”

“Clearly,” I said, just as I heard the door that led from the garage to the kitchen open then shut.

“Hello?” Cora called out. Roscoe, ears perked, trotted toward the sound of her voice. “Where is everybody?”

“We’re in here,” Jamie replied. A moment later, she appeared in the entrance to the foyer in her work clothes, the mail in one hand. “This is Ruby’s friend Peyton. This is Cora.”

“You’re Ruby’s sister?” Peyton asked. “That’s so cool!”

Cora gave her the once-over—subtly, I noticed—then extended her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Peyton replied, pumping it eagerly. “Really nice.”

My sister was smiling politely. Her expression barely changed, only enough to make it more than clear to me that she had seen—and probably smelled—what Jamie had not. Like Peyton’s mom, she didn’t miss much. “Well,” she said. “I guess we should think about dinner?”

“Right,” Jamie said. “Peyton, can you stay?”

“Oh,” Peyton said, “actually—”

“She can’t,” I finished for her. “So, um, I’m going to go ahead and give her the tour, if that’s all right.”

“Sure, sure,” Jamie said. Beside him, Cora was studying Peyton, her eyes narrowed, as I nodded for her to follow me into the kitchen. “Be sure to show her the pond!”

“Pond?” Peyton said, but by then I was already tugging her onto the deck, the door swinging shut behind us. I waited until we were a few feet away from the house before stopping and turning to face her.

“What are you
doing
?” I asked.

She raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“Peyton, you’re blinded. And my sister could totally tell.”

“Oh, she could not,” she said easily, waving her hand. “I used Visine.”

I rolled my eyes, not even bothering to address this. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

For a moment, she looked hurt, then pouty. “And you should have called me,” she replied. “You said you were going to. Remember?”

Cora and Jamie were by the island in the kitchen now, looking out at us. “I’m still getting settled in,” I told her, but she turned, ignoring this as she walked over to the pond. In her ponytails and in profile, she looked like a little kid. “Look, this is complicated, okay?”

“For me, too,” she said, peering down into the water. As I stepped up beside her I saw it was too dark to see anything, but you could hear the pump going, the distant waterfall. “I mean, a lot’s happened since you left, Ruby.”

I glanced back inside. Jamie was gone, but Cora remained, and she was looking right at me. “Like what?”

Peyton glanced over at me, then shrugged. “I just . . .” she said softly. “I wanted to talk to you. That’s all.”

“About what?”

She took in a breath, then let it out just as Roscoe popped through the dog door and began to trot toward us. “Nothing,” she said, turning back to the water. “I mean, I miss you. We used to hang out every day, and then you just disappear. It’s weird.”

“I know,” I said. “And believe me, I’d go back to the way things were in a minute if I could. But it’s just not an option. This is my life now. At least for a little while.”

She considered this as she looked at the pond, then turned slightly, taking in the house rising up behind us. “It is different,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”

In the end, Peyton stayed for less than an hour, just long enough to get a tour, catch me up on the latest Jackson gossip, and turn down two more invitations to stay for dinner from Jamie, who seemed beside himself with the fact that I actually had a real, live friend. Cora, however, had a different take, or so I found out later, when I was folding clothes and looked up to see her standing in my bedroom doorway.

“So,” she said, “tell me about Peyton.”

I focused on pairing up socks as I said, “Not much to tell.”

“Have you two been friends a long time?”

I shrugged. “A year or so. Why?”

“No reason.” She leaned against the doorjamb, watching as I moved on to jeans. “She just seemed . . . sort of scattered, I guess. Not exactly your type.”

It was tempting to point out that Cora herself wasn’t exactly in a position to claim to know me that well. But I held my tongue, still folding.

“Anyway,” she continued, “in the future, though, if you could let us know when you were having people over, I’d appreciate it.”

Like I’d had so many people showing up—all one of them!—that this was suddenly a problem. “I didn’t know she was coming,” I told her. “I forgot she even knew where I was staying.”

She nodded. “Well, just keep it in mind. For next time.”

Next time,
I thought.
Whatever.
“Sure,” I said aloud.

I kept folding, waiting for her to say something else. To go further, insinuating more, pulling me into an argument I didn’t deserve, much less want to have. But instead, she just stepped back out of the doorway and started down the hall to her own room. A moment later, she called out for me to sleep well, and I responded in kind, these nicer last words delivered like an afterthought to find themselves, somewhere, in the space between us.

Chapter Seven

Usually I worked for Harriet from three thirty till seven, during which time she was supposed to take off to eat a late lunch and run errands. Invariably, however, she ended up sticking around for most of my shift, her purse in hand as she fretted and puttered, unable to actually leave.

“I’m sorry,” she’d say, reaching past me to adjust a necklace display I’d already straightened twice. “It’s just . . . I like things a certain way, you know?”

I knew. Harriet had built her business from the ground up, starting straight out of art school, and the process had been difficult, involving struggle, the occasional compromise of artistic integrity, and a near brush with bankruptcy. Still, she’d soldiered on, just her against the world. Which was why, I figured, it was so hard for her to adjust to the fact that now there were two of us.

Still, sometimes her neurosis was so annoying—following along behind me, checking and redoing each thing I did, taking over every task so I sometimes spent entire shifts doing nothing at all—that I wondered why she’d bothered to hire me. One day, when she had literally let me do nothing but dust for hours, I finally asked her.

“Truth?” she said. I nodded. “I’m overwhelmed. My orders are backed up, I’m constantly behind in my books, and I’m completely exhausted. If it wasn’t for caffeine, I’d be dead right now.”

“Then let me help you.”

“I’m
trying
.” She took a sip from her ever-present coffee cup. “But it’s hard. Like I said, I’ve always been a one-woman operation. That way, I’m responsible for everything, good and bad. And I’m afraid if I relinquish any control . . .”

I waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, I said, “You’ll lose everything.”

Her eyes widened. “Yes!” she said. “How did you know?”

Like I was going to go there. “Lucky guess,” I said instead.

“This business is the only thing I’ve ever had that was all mine,” she said. “I’m scared to death something will happen to it.”

“Yeah,” I said as she took another gulp of coffee, “but accepting help doesn’t have to mean giving up control.”

It occurred to me, saying this, that I should take my own advice. Thinking back over the last few weeks, however— staying at Cora’s, my college deal with Jamie—I realized maybe I already had.

Harriet was so obsessed with her business that, from what I could tell, she had no personal life whatsoever. During the day, she worked at the kiosk; at night, she went straight home, where she stayed up into the early hours making more pieces. Maybe this was how she wanted it. But there were clearly others who would welcome a change.

Like Reggie from Vitamin Me, for example. When he was going for food, he always stopped to see if she needed anything. If things were slow, he’d drift over to the open space between our two stalls to shoot the breeze. When Harriet said she was tired, he instantly offered up B-COMPLEXES; if she sneezed, he was like a quick draw with the echinacea. One day after he’d brought her an herbal tea and some ginkgo biloba—she’d been complaining she couldn’t remember anything anymore—she said, “He’s just so nice. I don’t know why he goes to so much trouble.”

“Because he likes you,” I said.

She jerked her head, surprised, and looked at me. “What? ”

“He likes you,” I repeated. To me, this was a no-brainer, as obvious as daylight. “You know that.”

“Reggie?” she’d said, her surprised tone making it clear she did not. “No, no. We’re just friends.”

“The man gave you ginkgo,” I pointed out. “Friends don’t do that.”

“Of course they do.”

“Harriet, come on.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I mean, we’re friends, but the idea of something more is just . . .” she said, continuing to thumb through the receipts. Then, suddenly, she looked up at me, then over at Reggie, who was helping some woman with some protein powder. “Oh my God. Do you really think?”

“Yes,” I said flatly, eyeing the ginkgo, which he’d piled neatly on the register with a note. Signed with a smiley face. “I do.”

“Well, that’s just ridiculous,” she said, her face flushing.

“Why? Reggie’s nice.”

“I don’t have time for a relationship,” she said, picking up her coffee and taking a gulp. The ginkgo she now eyed warily, like it was a time bomb, not a supplement. “It’s almost Christmas. That’s my busiest time of the year.”

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

“There’s just no way,” she said flatly, shaking her head.

“Why not?”

“Because it won’t work.” She banged open the register drawer, sliding in the receipts. “Right now, I can only focus on myself and this business. Everything else is a distraction.”

I was about to tell her this didn’t have to be true, necessarily. That she and Reggie already had a relationship: they were friends, and she could just see how it went from there. But really, I had to respect where she was coming from, even if in this case I didn’t agree with it. After all, I’d been determined to be a one-woman operation, as well, although lately this had been harder than you’d think. I’d found this out firsthand a few days earlier, when I was in the kitchen with Cora, minding my own business, and suddenly found myself swept up in Jamie’s holiday plans.

“Wait,” Cora said, looking down at the shirt on the table in front of her. “What is this for again?”

“Our Christmas card!” Jamie said, reaching into the bag he was holding to pull out another shirt—also a denim button -up, identical to hers—and handing it to me. “Remember how I said I wanted to do a photo this year?”

“You want us to wear matching shirts?” Cora asked as he took out yet one more, holding it up against his chest. “Seriously? ”

“Yeah,” Jamie said. “It’s gonna be great. Oh, and wait. I forgot the best part!”

He turned, jogging out of the room into the foyer. Cora and I just stared at each other across the table.

“Matching shirts?” I said.

“Don’t panic,” she said, although her own expression was hardly calm. She looked down at her shirt again. “At least, not yet.”

“Check it out,” Jamie said, coming back into the room. He had something behind his back, which he now presented to us, with a flourish. “For Roscoe!”

It was—yes—a denim shirt. Dog sized. With a red bow tie sewn on. Maybe I should have been grateful mine didn’t have one of these, but frankly, at that moment, I was too horrified.

“Jamie,” Cora said as he bent down beneath the table. I could hear banging around, along with some snuffling, as I assumed he attempted to wrangle Roscoe, who’d been dead asleep, into his outfit. “I’m all for a Christmas card. But do you really think we need to match?”

“In my family, we
always
wore matching outfits,” he said, his voice muffled from the underside of the table. “My mom used to make sweaters for all of us in the same colors. Then we’d pose, you know, by the stairs or the fireplace or whatever, for our card. So this is a continuation of the tradition.”

I looked at Cora.
“Do something,”
I mouthed, and she nodded, holding up her hand.

“You know,” she said as Jamie finally emerged from the table holding Roscoe, who looked none too happy and was already gnawing at the bow tie, “I just wonder if maybe a regular shot would work. Or maybe just one of Roscoe?”

Jamie’s face fell. “You don’t want to do a card with all of us?”

“Well,” she said, glancing at me, “I just . . . I guess it’s just not something we’re used to. Me and Ruby, I mean. Things were different at our house. You know.”

This, of course, was the understatement of the century. I had a few memories of Christmas when my parents were still together, but when my dad left, he pretty much took my mom’s yuletide spirit with him. After that, I’d learned to dread the holidays. There was always too much drinking, not enough money, and with school out I was stuck with my mom, and only my mom, for weeks on end. No one was happier to see the New Year come than I was.

“But,” Jamie said now, looking down at Roscoe, who had completely spit-soaked the bow tie and had now moved on to chewing the shirt’s sleeve, “that’s one reason I really wanted to do this.”

“What is?”

“You,” he said. “For you. I mean, and Ruby, too, of course. Because, you know, you missed out all those years.”

I turned to Cora again, waiting for her to go to bat for us once more. Instead, she was just looking at her husband, and I could have sworn she was tearing up. Shit.

“You know what?” she said as Roscoe coughed up some bow tie. “You’re absolutely right.”