He was still ranting, and Lauren doodled little circles in the margins of her notepad, waiting for the moment when she might be able to cut back in. When she’d come back from getting coffee earlier that morning, Asa was gone. Which, of course, had been the entire point of her leaving. But afterward her office had smelled like him, and then it turned out he’d left behind something else, too—a new entry on her notepad, no number next to it. Just INITIATE HOLIDAY SPIRIT SEQUENCE! written in blocky capital letters, bold and surprisingly neat. Whatever that meant.
Messing with someone’s to-do list should be illegal. Like opening someone’s mail or stealing their identity. Or reading their diary—it felt as bad, to Lauren. Not even that he’d written something on it, but that he’d seen it at all. It made her read back over every entry, wondering if there was anything incriminating, how each one might look through his eyes.
Cat pants was a definite low point.
She realized Mr. Stockard had paused to take a breath, and she’d been tracing over Asa’s letters with her pen, building them up with scratchy lines of ink. She set her pen down and tried to make her voice firm.
“I’ll look into it first thing in the morning, Mr. Stockard,” she said. “And have a new ledger ready when you open your booth this weekend. How does that sound?”
“Well, I suppose—” he started to grumble, and she cut him off before he could go into another rant.
“Great,” she said. “You have a wonderful day, Mr. Stockard. Thank you for trusting Cold World with your business.”
She hung up the phone, glancing at the digital clock on the display. If she left right now, she could still make it by five thirty, but it was going to be cutting it close . . .
“Oh, good,” Kiki said, stopping in the doorway. “I was hoping to catch you. Listen, do you still have my red off-the-shoulder dress?”
“Yeah,” Lauren said. “Sorry, I—”
She’d borrowed it from Kiki six months ago, for a date that had never ended up happening. Kiki had insisted she hang on to it until the date got rescheduled, but it got pushed back twice more and then eventually the guy had stopped responding to messages on the app, and somehow that stupid dress was still in her closet, a reminder of what a failure her romantic life was.
You could’ve been wearing it tonight, at dinner with Daniel, a voice in her head reminded her. She didn’t know how long this visit was going to go, but she probably could’ve met up with him after. Why hadn’t that occurred to her in the moment?
Kiki waved off her apology. “It’s fine,” she said. “But I’m going to have to go to Marj’s holiday party this year and I promised her I’d show her all the options. I think she’s seriously afraid I’ll show up at a swanky law firm shindig wearing a negligee or something.”
Kiki’s girlfriend, Marj, was a brand-new associate at a law firm downtown and apparently had become a huge stressball over navigating the hierarchies and networking events. It was even harder given that they were in an openly gay relationship and Marj, who was Korean, was the only associate of color at her law firm. Lauren knew it had been causing tension in their relationship, which sucked because Kiki seemed to really care about Marj, from everything she’d heard.
“I can bring it to work tomorrow,” Lauren said.
“I was hoping to get it tonight, if that’s not too much trouble,” Kiki said. “When does your thing end? Text me and I can come over.”
Lauren hesitated. In theory, that sounded fine. Nice, even. She’d never had anyone from work over to her apartment. She’d barely had anyone not from work over to her apartment, unless you counted her landlord that time her faucet kept leaking.
Kiki must’ve read her reluctance, though, because she said, “Or you can stop by my place. Asa won’t get home from his shift until after nine, if you’re worried.”
Lauren made an incredulous expression that she knew without a mirror just looked like bad acting. “Why would I be worried about that?”
“Um,” Kiki said. “Okay. Maybe I misread into why you didn’t come to our Thanksgiving, even though I totally invited you and I happen to know you spent yours watching that documentary about the McDonald’s Monopoly scam again.”
“The again seems unnecessary,” Lauren muttered. “Anyway, I really have to get out of here—but text me your address and I’ll drop by later.”
She thought about Kiki’s words all the way to her car, though, and kept thinking about them as she pulled onto the highway and let her phone’s GPS guide her to the address where she would be meeting her guardian ad litem kid for the first time. Maybe knowing that Kiki and Asa were housemates had been partially behind her decision to skip Thanksgiving over there, although she hated the idea that her antipathy toward him was that obvious. Or that she might’ve hurt Kiki’s feelings by turning down an invitation that had been made in friendship.
The truth was, Lauren never quite knew how to handle the holidays. Her memories of Christmas with her mother were that it was always a stressful time—cold, sleeping in the car, or hectic as they moved from one motel to another. There had never been enough money, or food, or joy, and then the state had removed Lauren from her mom’s care. She understood why it had happened—the drugs in the car, the long nights nine-year-old Lauren had been left alone—but she still sometimes wondered if she’d really been better off. She’d been safer, for sure. But she’d never seen her mother again.
And she’d been one of the lucky ones, relatively speaking. She’d landed in a foster home with Miss Bianca, who’d provided structure and stability and if not quite love, then a type of care that seemed awfully close to it. Every Christmas, Miss Bianca would send Lauren a card, just a quick note to wish her a happy holiday. It made Lauren feel valued and remembered, reminded her of what Miss Bianca had done for her. It also reminded her that Miss Bianca had already moved on, and there wasn’t a place for Lauren back there anymore.
Lauren’s background was definitely the reason why, when she’d seen a flyer in her building’s lobby about becoming a guardian ad litem, she decided to volunteer. She’d never had one, but other foster kids who’d lived in the home with her had. If she could help a kid out, be their advocate in court, monitor their placements and whether their parents were working their case plans, ensure that their schools were following any education plan needed . . . she wanted to do that.
Of course, when she’d signed up and completed the training, she hadn’t focused on the part where she’d have to actually interact with a child. A child who might be defensive or closed off or jaded in ways that she’d have a hard time breaking through. She’d gotten a short blurb on the child she’d be working with—his name was Eddie, he was nine years old, he liked Avengers, and he’d already witnessed more abuse from his stepfather than anyone should have to, much less a child.