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“Hmm, I wouldn’t go that far.” Heidi made her way to the en suite bathroom. She rummaged in drawers until she found Carine’s spare toothbrush, still in the imprinted packaging from her dentist. “I’ll allow that you have certain diplomatic privileges.”
“Yay! I’m easy. I’ll take that. You do amazing work.” Carine entered the bathroom behind Heidi eighty-five percent gathered. She glanced in the mirror, grimaced, and grabbed a microfiber makeup cloth from the towel ring. “I’m a very lucky ducky.”
“Well, the way I see things,” Heidi said around the toothbrush in her mouth, “the luck goes both ways. I get a trophy redhead and the ability to call dibs on the best properties in Shora.”
Carine stopped scrubbing lipstick and raised a brow. “Plural?”
“After our little conversation with my starter home neighbors, I chatted with Tim about possibly letting Kevin and Kalimah have my condo. In theory, it’s a good idea for kids just getting started. I feel like they’ll outgrow it quickly, though. It’s two bedrooms and a single story. And no neighbor really wants to share a wall with a family that has a baby unless they have one of their own.”
“You’re buying them a house?”
“Not precisely. Tim and I will deal with the money stuff upfront. They’ll start paying us back when they’re a little more solvent. We’d have to talk to her family about it, of course. My intention isn’t to step on any toes. I just don’t see the good in them struggling unnecessarily in this economy. There are no lessons to be learned from that except that their generation has to work three times as long to get the same shit their parents got at twenty-five.”
“That’d be so sweet of you. And Kevin’s first job was here. That would hold special memories for him.”
“Right. The place where he got his head screwed on.” Heidi rinsed, spit, and left the brush in the caddy next to Carine’s. “Let me get my house sorted out first, and then we’ll get serious about the Shora Dowd abode 2.0.”
“If my parents were as generous as you and Tim, I might have made something of myself.”
Heidi chuckled and crossed the bedroom to the hallway door. “I thought you were trying to make yourself a kept woman.”
Carine poked her head out of the bathroom and stopped rubbing again. “I was joking about that.”
“You may have been, but I wasn’t.”
A compact SUV was pulling up to the curb as Heidi finished descending the staircase. “Your clients are here, Carine.”
“Coming!”
“Again?”
Heidi could barely make out Carine’s sigh and, imagining the disaffected face Carine must have been making, let herself smile.
She didn’t want to leave, but she hadn’t really had a plan for the visit beyond hand-delivering paperwork, providing food so Carine couldn’t make excuses about eating, and allowing herself the pleasure of witnessing the redhead’s unguarded cheer. Heidi couldn’t fathom any wonder on Earth more beautiful than a contented Carine.
Carine hurried down the stairs carrying her shoes by the heels.
The front door slung open the moment she pressed in close to transfer more of her lipstick onto Heidi’s person.
The matron standing on the other side with her two sulky teens behind her looked from one woman to the other, wearing a mighty scowl.
It wasn’t a summer heat scowl. Heidi knew what those looked like. That woman looked at her with pure distaste.
Most of the time strangers’ instant derision didn’t bother Heidi. One of her superpowers was compartmentalizing and shoving other people’s bullshit into the waste bin in her mind. She was known for being calm, cool, and collected during even the most agitating circumstances. However, that was because few things incited her. She didn’t care much about herself. She cared endlessly about Carine, though, which was why her afternoon coffee threatened to heave itself back out the way it’d entered. Too many women had already told her what might happen if folks found out.
“Whoops.” Carine swiped at Heidi’s jaw with her thumb. “Lost my brain for a sec. Forgot just that fast that I’d just put more on.”
The girl teen elbowed the boy teen. “See. Told you it couldn’t be worse than home.”
The older woman let out a breath and transferred her purse strap to her shoulder. All the tension and strife she’d been holding in her forehead and jaw eased as though someone had just pushed a syringe full of Xanax into her I.V. “Which one of you is Carine?”
Carine raised a hand. “At your service.”
“Well, Carine, just pick a lot and put something on it.”
Carine cut Heidi a look, but Heidi had no answers for her. Heidi was still fighting the afternoon’s coffee.
“Past few years have taught me a lot about first impressions,” the lady said. “Kissing a person at work probably doesn’t meet the benchmark of professionalism, but my kids are comfortable now, so I guess everything’ll be all right. It’s been a rough year.”
