“We never have any sugar, Dad,” Bean said.
“Because I don’t buy it. But, bro, you have plenty of sugar. You ate an entire bag of gummies yesterday, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” Bean said.
Seth turned back to Lorna. “He can have sugar. I mean, within reason. I wouldn’t want him eating an entire cake.”
“No, of course not,” she said. “Whew! That’s a relief, because I honestly can’t abide people who are holier-than-thou about sugar.”
Seth and Bean both laughed, like they thought she was joking. She wasn’t.
“Lorna, are you really sure about this?” Seth asked again. “It’s awfully generous of you. And I am grateful. But I hope you’re not offering because I seem desperate.”
He didn’t seem desperate; he seemed very sure of himself. “Aggie loves him, and I—” She caught herself just in time. She’d almost said she loved him too. “I think it will be fine. Fun. It could be fun. Shall we cut the brownies?”
“Yay!” Bean shouted.
She cut them and put three squares on three small plates. They agreed the brownies looked good—not too fluffy, not too flat. And they tasted very good. “I’m giving them a ten!” Bean declared, and wrote it down in his notebook.
“Thanks, Lorna,” Seth said as he moved his son along toward the door. “You’re the best.”
She was the best? Lorna could feel the gigantic smile forming on her lips.
He paused with Bean at the threshold of her apartment. “You’ve got a bit of chocolate on your cheek.”
She put her hand to her cheek.
“Other one,” he said, and smiled so warmly that it practically melted that chocolate right off her face.
Chapter 12Lorna Now
Lorna was beginning to realize she didn’t have a lot of “casual” clothes. Her clothing had somehow become her shield. She was not the most fashionable woman—never had been—but she wouldn’t mind having a bit more flair. Her confidence to do that had deserted her somewhere during the pandemic. She didn’t have the body type for frilly dresses or the sophistication for slender capris. Suits hid a multitude of physical flaws. So said the salesperson at Dillard’s.
At one point in her life, she’d worn a lot of dresses. Her favorite one, an egg-yolk yellow, had been ruined when Kristen vomited on her. Now she associated that style of dress with being too soft. To be successful in sales, according to her books, you had to project an air of authority.
But she wasn’t projecting anything while on leave and didn’t know how to dress for every day. It would have been super helpful if she could ask Kristen what to wear. There was a time Kristen had been very stylish. Even when she was disgusting.
Today, Lorna pulled her hair into a low, tight pony. She chose a simple black skirt that came to her knees. Stockings, of course—no one needed to see sun-damaged skin. A lavender pullover sweater that Deb had once said made her blue eyes pop.Sensible flats with arch support. No sense being distracted by aching feet shoved into heels.
She cut up the last of the brownies she and Bean had made and put them on a plastic tray decorated with dancing Christmas trees, a holdover from the last Christmas party she’d attended some six years ago at her coworker Sheldon’s house. She hadn’t been invited back, and it was probably her own dumb fault—she’d decided to debate some drunk dude on whether marijuana ought to be legalized. She tended toward firm opinions and, as Deb said, could be weirdly adamant about topics most people didn’t feel so strongly about. “Opinions about legalizing marijuana are just part of the zeitgeist.”
Deb made a fair point. Lorna didn’t care about a lot of things in the zeitgeist—like sports or politics or road improvement projects. She knew people who could talk for days about any of those topics.
But she did care about drug use. She was adamantly against it.
She was arranging the few squares on the tray when she heard a knock on her door that roused Aggie from her nap. She wiped her hands and went to the door, opening it only a crack.
“Hi!” Mrs. Foster said cheerfully, peering through the crack.
“Umm... hi,” Lorna said, surprised.
“Liz. From upstairs?”
“Yes.” Did she really think Lorna didn’t know who she was?
Liz from upstairs tried to peer into Lorna’s apartment, so Lorna made the crack a tiny bit smaller, which somehow only made Aggie’s sniffing at the door louder.
“I was wondering if you’d had a chance to speak to Mr. Contreras?”
