AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lauren walked over to the shop door and flipped the OPEN sign backward, then turned the lock. “Just in case anyone should come by.” She glanced nervously to the back of the shop, then at Allie. “First off, I just want to say that I’m sorry for the mystery but I’m not sorry I wrote that letter. I meant it every word of it, you know.”
Allie stilled. “You’re really a fan of my Perky the Duck story?”
“How could anyone not be? I love that story.”
Of course this was something Allie would never get tired of hearing. “Thanks, but what about the other stuff? The stuff about a ghost?”
“Okay, so maybe I let my imagination run away with me a little, but there really has been some strange stuff going on around town. It all started when…” she frowned, “When I bought that record player over there.”
Allie followed the sound of The Shirelles to the back of the store, where a beat up old record player sat on a brightly painted wooden table. She stared at the black vinyl 45 turning round and round. A dozen or so album jackets lay stacked next to the player. Allie picked up the jacket on top. It was The Beatles’ The White Album. In the corner, written in faded blue ink was the name Barbara Alvarez. She quickly flipped through the albums—there it all was, Jim Morrison and The Doors, Franke Valle and the Four Seasons. Even Buela’s favorite salsa singer, Celia Cruz.
“Oh my God. This is Buela’s old record player. But…what are you doing with it?”
“I bought it at a garage sale a couple of months back, along with that stack of records. I figured it would be a great novelty for the shop, but the record player wasn’t working. Not until Tom fixed it.”
“Tom fixed this?”
“Oh yeah. He’s terrific with his hands, you know.” As a matter of fact, Allie did know. Was Lauren making a double entendre? Her smile was vague enough that Allie couldn’t tell. But she could certainly see why Lauren and Mimi had become friends. There was something so dang nice about her. But there was also this quirky side that Allie had never known about.
This woman had been Tom’s wife. She was the mother of his child. Allie couldn’t help but feel jealous, even though she had no right to.
She ey
ed the record player again. She remembered it, of course, it had sat in their little living room for years. Mimi said she’d saved all the photos and the heirlooms and the rest had gone to Goodwill. A scratched up record player would have probably seemed like a piece of junk. But where had it been all these years? Doing the garage sale circuit? How strange was it that it landed in Lauren’s hands? And that Tom was the one who’d made it work again.
“Of course, if you like, you can have it. I didn’t know who Barbara Alvarez was. Not until Mimi saw it and told me.”
Allie shifted from foot to foot. “The thing is…I know it sounds crazy, but—”
“You’ve been hearing some of this music. Like, in your head,” Lauren said with a completely straight face. If Allie was being punked then Lauren should be up for an academy award. “I have, too! Well, just a few snippets of it here and there. Isn’t it awesome?”
Allie felt the blood rush to her ears. “I don’t understand.”
Lauren gently took her by the elbow. “Let’s go to my office where we can sit down.”
*~*~*
Lauren handed her a cup of tea. Allie wasn’t a hot tea drinker but she gratefully took it. “Thanks.” She took a long sip, letting the warm liquid soothe her frazzled nerves. This was definitely turning out to be the strangest week of her life.
Lauren sat on the edge of her desk, facing Allie. “A couple of weeks ago, Tom was working at the senior center site and I decided to surprise him by bringing him lunch. He works way too hard, you know.”
“That was…nice of you.”
“I know what you’re thinking. We’re divorced. What the hell am I doing bringing him lunch? But it’s not like that between us. I love Tom. Not in the I-want-to-spend-the rest-of-my-life-having-hot-sex-with-you kind of way, but in the let’s-be-friends-and-raise-a-son kind of way.”
“O-kay,” Allie muttered.
Lauren tried to hide her smile. “So there I was handing him a Bistro by the Beach tuna melt—that’s his favorite, in case you might need to know for future reference—when all of a sudden I started hearing that old song, Where Did Our Love Go? in my head. You know, by The Supremes? At first I chocked it up as a side effect of listening to all this great old music all day long, but the thing was…I only heard the song whenever I’d run into Tom and I began to wonder if the universe wasn’t trying to tell me something. That maybe we’d made a mistake by getting a divorce.”
Allie felt her stomach roil over. “And…was it?”
“No! That’s the thing. Our marriage was the mistake, not the divorce.”
Allie let go of the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding in. Not until now, anyway. “All right. But I still don’t get it. Why the phony ghost email?”
Lauren’s face scrunched up. “That was initially Mimi’s idea. Like I said, we’ve become good friends and I told her about the music thing. How it seemed too weird of a coincidence that it began with the salvaging of your grandmother’s record player. Don’t you see? The song wasn’t about me and Tom. It was about you and Tom. It’s like the universe is trying to get you and Tom back together. With some help from your grandmother, of course.”
Allie laid her mug down on the desk. “Sorry. You’ve totally lost me here.”
