“Right, Dad. Bye, Aggie!” Bean dipped down to rub Agnes behind her ears.
“Lorna, thanks so much,” Seth said. “I don’t know what I’d do without such good neighbors. I’m lucky to have found this place.”
He was right, hewaslucky. She was the unlucky one here—he was living in her house.
“Nice to meet you officially,” he said, and put a hand on Bean’s shoulder, pushing him across the hall.
“Thanks,” Lorna said, like a dolt.
“Bye, Lorna!” Bean called. And then he turned to his dad andbegan to talk a blue streak as his dad opened their door. “Dad, she’s got all these littlepeoplein her room. Like,thousands.”
Not thousands, Lorna wanted to shout, to clear up any misconception that she was off her rocker.
She shut the door. Agnes whimpered.
“You’re really starting to hurt my feelings, you know.”
Agnes wagged her knob of a tail.
Lorna went into the kitchen and cleaned up the milk (spilled) and cookie crumbs (everywhere). She made herself a frozen dinner while Agnes dined on kibble. Her Precious Moments figurines stared at her while she ate at the bar. There really were a lot.
She put down her fork and glared back at the figurines. Whatliarsthey were. No one had moments like what they portrayed. They were all just someone’s sick idea of a happy fantasy.
Lorna suddenly hated them. She hated herself for having them.
She thought of Bean. He was six when his mother died. None of the mother-son figurines were true for him. She was thirty-eight when her mother died. None of the mother-daughter figurines were true for her either.
She thought of herself at six and had an overwhelming urge to cry.Again.
Good Lord, what was with the tears lately?
Chapter 5Lorna Is Six
The summer she is six and kristen is ten, lorna’s parents decide to take them to Mustang Island for the week. They share their plans over hot dogs and fries one night, and Kristen does cartwheels around the kitchen until her mother shouts at her to stop.
Lorna has never been to the beach. She doesn’t know what a beach is. When they are at Nana’s the next weekend, Nana shows them pictures fromEncyclopaedia Britannica: white sand, blue water, palm trees. “This is where all the fish live, and you can swim there,” she says.
“Sharks and whales swim there too,” Kristen says ominously.
Lorna has seen sharks and whales on the television. “I don’t want to swim there.”
“You’re a baby,” Kristen says. “We can make them our pets.”
“You won’t be swimming with sharks and whales, Lolo,” her grandmother assures her, although Lorna doesn’t believe her. “And, Kristen, you won’t be making any of them your pet.”
Kristen shrugs. “I bet I can.”
Nana takes them to buy pails and shovels for the beach. “This is how you build sand forts and castles,” she explains. “You dig the sand and put it in the pail and pack it down. It will maketowers. Then pile up the towers until you have walls.” She finds pictures of sandcastles and shows them. Lorna is entranced by all the pictures of things that can be made from sand—even mermaids and puppies. The castles intrigue her the most. She imagines the one she wants to build—just like her princess castle that Papa erected in the backyard.
Later, Mommy brings home bathing suits for them. “Look what I found today!” she says happily, pulling them out of the plastic bag. “Aren’t they adorable?”
“Yes!” Lorna says. They are pink with little blue whales frolicking around and three blue ruffles on each hip.
“I hate it,” Kristen says.
“Kristen,” her mother says wearily. “You can’t hate it—you haven’t even seen it on.”
That afternoon, Kristen gets a pair of scissors and cuts off the ruffles, then cuts a hole in the belly of her suit to make it look like a two-piece. When Mommy sees what she’s done, she shouts at Kristen. “That cost fifteen dollars! You’re going to pay me back every cent.”
