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CHAPTER TWENTY
“Lord, what in the world are you wearing?” the elder Mrs. Murray asked Carine as she edged her way between the shaded rocking chairs on the senior community’s expansive patio.
Carine glanced down at her loose-fitting gray sweatpants and unlaced sneakers and gritted her teeth.
She’d been raised better. Her mother had always trained her to never leave the house unless she was sure her potential demise wouldn’t create an embarrassing corpse. But she’d had a rare day off after a hectic week of showings, closings, and paperwork avalanches. Her tolerance for petty details was at an all-time low.
She’d dated plenty of cagey people before, but none had flipped on her as quickly as Heidi had. It didn’t make sense to her, and she couldn’t pinpoint what had changed.
Their last conversation had been more than a week prior. Heidi had said barely twenty words in it in a starkly unbalanced ratio to Carine’s million or so. She’d informed Carine, “We shouldn’t do this,” and there’d been no arguing with her.
No one ever argued with Heidi except Kevin, and not even he was that reckless anymore.
She’d certainly listened to every word Carine had screamed at her but hadn’t offered nearly enough in return for Carine to make sense of what Heidi was unilaterally deciding.
Carine got dumped.
“You’ll have to excuse my appearance.” Carine adjusted the angle of the patio umbrella so Mrs. Murray could stop squinting. She looked comfortable and settled—like she’d been sitting there for a while, and no one had thought to step outside to check on her. “I’d planned to vacuum out my car sometime today, and I’ve put the task off for so long that I can’t risk doing it in good clothes. Anyway, I couldn’t get in touch with Heidi, so I came out to ask if you’d seen Valerie’s plans for the house.”
“What do you mean you couldn’t get in touch with Heidi?” Mrs. Murray asked. “Everybody knows how to get in touch with Heidi.”
Carine gritted her teeth again.
Probably.And she probably takes their calls.
No matter how tempting tattling was, she wouldn’t drag Mrs. Murray into her and Heidi’s bullshit. That’d never been her style. “Val wanted to know what you thought about the ramps and heights on things. She wants to make sure you can get around easily even if your mobility devices change over time.”
“Oh, that’s sweet of her. I had that grass-for-brains son of mine check the measurements. He said they were about the same as the ones here, just a little wider through the hallways. Fran likes the dumbwaiter she’s putting in the garage so we can get the shopping out of the car.”
“Yeah, that was a stroke of brilliance. Where is Fran, anyway?”
“At the desk, telling them folks again to stop letting her daughter-in-law in here. They keep forgetting Fran took her off the list.”
“Why? Why’d she take her off the list, I mean? I was under the impression that people liked having more guests, not fewer.”
Mrs. Murray snorted. “It’s an old folks’ place, Carine, not prison. The company’s nice, but most of us aren’t that desperate. And she was just gettin’ into business that don’t belong to her.” Mrs. Murray straightened up a little, and her eyes suddenly sparkled with mischief. “I heard Shora’s getting a wine store. That so?”
Carine’s left cheek contracted with a powerful spasm. She’d heard of contributing to the delinquency of minors, but she didn’t know if there was an elder equivalent. The last thing she needed was for Mrs. Murray to think that Carine was a proponent of alcohol.
In the past week, she had been a proponent of that, and also some unlabeled gummies Leah must have hidden in Carine’s purse, but that was none of Mrs. Murray’s business.
“A lot of businesses are interested, including a very nice-looking yarn store,” Carine said. “Right now, we’re still sorting out the details. So, can I tell Val her revisions are fine?”
“Tell her as soon as possible. Let’s get this show on the road. I was hoping to be out of here by Christmas.”
“That’s pretty aggressive pacing. Why by Christmas?”
Mrs. Murray crossed her eyes and crooked her thumb toward the building behind her. “Always smells bad. All the decorations and the glue from the arts and crafts and the powdered mashed potatoes with the tinny gravy they put in the buffet every night. It turns my stomach.”
In a loose-fitting floral print housedress and with her lilac-silver hair done up in pin curls, Fran took the long way around the patio, occasionally extending her cane to avoid bumping her legs against chairs as she passed. “That Heidi’s girl?”
Carine swallowed a sigh.
“Mm-hmm.” Mrs. Murray opened her hand to take the wrapped piece of candy Fran held out. It wasn’t drugstore hard penny candy, either. It was one of those gold-wrapped truffles Carine never bought unless they were in the special holiday packaging that got discounted the day after the event. “Finishing up the house plans.”
After giving the rocking chair beside Mrs. Murray a long, scrutinizing look, Fran slowly sat. “We gonna be out of here by Christmas?”
“Hope so.”
