Chapter 3 - The List in the Kitchen Drawer
Nora is thirty-one. She's a nurse, she pays her bills the day they arrive, and she does not waste words. When she said *didn't she borrow something else*, she wasn't trying to stir the pot. She was just remembering something I'd let myself forget.
"The carpet cleaner," I said.
She pointed at me. "The carpet cleaner. How long ago?"
"Five weeks. Maybe six."
She pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. "And before that?"
I opened the drawer next to the stove — the one with the takeout menus and the dead batteries and everything I mean to deal with later. In the back was a spiral notepad. I'd started it in April, the week the roasting pan came home with a wobbling handle and Sherry swore up and down she hadn't noticed.
I put the notepad on the table between us.
Nora read it without picking it up. Her face didn't move, but she went quiet in that way she has when something is worse than she expected.
"Mom. That's ten things."
"I know."
"And the carpet cleaner's the only one she still has?"
"The only one I know about. Everything else came back eventually. Late, or filthy, or broken in some little way she could pretend wasn't her fault."
"What's the carpet cleaner worth?"
"Three hundred and forty new. I bought it four years ago. It was in good shape." I stopped. "It was."
"You don't know what shape it's in now."
"No. Because she still has it."
Nora leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a second. Then she looked at me.
"So you ask for it back."
"In writing," I said. "And from now on I write everything down."
"And if it comes back broken?"
I didn't answer right away. I picked up the notepad and read down the list. The ladder with the bent rung she said came bent. The slow cooker with no lid. The steamer that rattles now. The roasting pan. And at the bottom, in fresher ink: the mixer.
"Then I'll have it in writing," I said. "All ten. And she's going to answer for all of them at once, in one place, instead of one shrug at a time."
"Text her," Nora said. "Don't call. You want a record."
"That's exactly what I was thinking."
I typed it short and flat. No temper in it.
*Hi Sherry. I need the carpet cleaner back this week. Please leave it on my porch by Thursday. Thanks.*
I showed Nora before I hit send. She nodded. I sent it.
We both watched the phone on the table. Three minutes. Then the little dots.
*Oh gosh, I completely forgot I still had that! I'll get Dale to run it over. Might be a few days, we've been slammed.*
"A few days," Nora read over my shoulder.
"I said Thursday."
"She didn't agree to Thursday."
"No," I said. "She didn't."
I set the phone down and looked out at the house across the grass — the lit windows, the SUV in the drive.
"Mom," Nora said quietly. "What are you actually planning to do?"
I looked at the repair receipt on the counter. The labor estimate. The part that might not even exist anymore.
"I'm going to give her until Thursday," I said. "And then I'm going to make a phone call she is not going to see coming."
"To who?"
I didn't get to answer. My phone lit up again — not a text this time. A call. A local number, no name attached.
"Hello?"
A woman's voice, careful, like she'd been working up to it.
May you like
"Is this the woman on Bellhaven Lane? The one who lent her neighbor the KitchenAid?"
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