Chapter 6 - Lemon Shortbread and the Wrong Foot
I read it three times.
*We got off on the wrong foot.*
I put the phone face-down on the counter and stood there with my palm flat on the cold tile. Then I picked it up and read it a fourth time, because I wanted to be sure I had the tone right.
I did.
She wasn't sorry. She was moving pieces around. *We* got off on the wrong foot — like it had been mutual, like two equals had a little misunderstanding, like the mixer had somehow tripped and fallen onto her porch by itself.
I didn't answer that night.
In the morning I called Nora before I did anything else and read it to her.
"She knows," Nora said.
"She knows something. Not how much."
"So what do you do?"
I'd been turning it over since I woke up. I could stay silent and let Yvonne's letter hit her cold. Or I could answer — short, calm — and let her believe the whole thing was still hers to manage.
"I'm going to answer," I said. "I'm going to agree to talk."
"Why give her that?"
"Because if she thinks she can still charm her way out of this, she'll keep talking. And every single thing she says, I'm going to have my phone in my hand and I'm going to write it down."
I texted back four words.
*Sure. Today at two.*
She was at my door at five past two.
She'd dressed for it. Not fancy — but the kind of put-together that means somebody stood in front of a mirror. She had a little white paper bag in one hand.
I opened the door before she could knock.
"Maren." She lifted the bag. "I brought those lemon shortbreads you said you liked that one time. From the bakery on Kessler."
I didn't take it. I stepped back and let her in.
She set the bag on my counter herself and looked around my kitchen the way people do when they're stalling.
"Sit down," I said.
She sat. I stayed on my feet, leaning against the counter by the sink.
"So." She laced her fingers together on the table. "I've felt bad about how things went at my door. I was stressed that morning. I said it wrong."
"Said what wrong?"
She blinked. She'd expected me to jump in — *oh, it's fine, don't worry about it* — and hand her the wheel. I didn't.
"I was dismissive," she said. "About the mixer. I know it meant something to you."
"It meant something to me," I said. "And the motor is seized. The repair is three hundred and ten dollars, and the part may not exist anymore."
"I know. I feel terrible."
"Do you."
"Of course I do."
"Because at your door you told me to buy a new one. And then I find out you've been walking around this neighborhood telling people my machine died on its own. That I handed you a piece of junk."
The color moved in her face. Not a lot. A tightening around the eyes and mouth.
"I don't know where you heard that."
"Doesn't matter where I heard it. Is it true?"
"I might have mentioned to a friend that the machine gave me trouble. I was embarrassed about the party. I wasn't trying to —"
"Sherry." I kept my voice flat and even. "You told people it failed me. That I sent you something already broken. While it was sitting on a workbench because of the way you ran it."
She looked at the table. "I didn't mean it like that."
"And the carpet cleaner. Due back Thursday. It's Saturday."
"I've been meaning to send Dale over with it. He's been buried at work —"
"I need it back today. Before five."
She looked up at me for a long moment, and I watched her recalculate — the shortbread, the mirror, *we got off on the wrong foot*, none of it landing anywhere.
"Maren." Her voice went warmer, lower, more personal. "I know this has been hard. But we're neighbors. Neighbors work things out between themselves. I really don't want this turning into some big production."
"It's already a big production," I said. "It turned into one the second you left my mother's mixer out on the boards without knocking and then told me to go buy a new one."
She didn't have anything for that.
"Carpet cleaner," I said. "Before five."
She stood. She left the shortbread on the counter. At the door she turned back, and for the first time her face wasn't warm or careful or calculating. It was just cold.
"I hope you know," she said, "that I have been a good neighbor to you."
"You've borrowed ten things from me in one year," I said. "And you've broken two of them."
She left.
At 4:47, Dale carried the carpet cleaner across the grass and set it on my porch without knocking. I watched from the window.
I went out to look at it.
There was a crack running along the bottom seam of the water tank. Someone had laid a strip of clear packing tape over it and pressed the edges down smooth, so you wouldn't see it unless you were already looking.
May you like
Someone had wanted me not to look.
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