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“Oh,” she said, handing it back.
“Lucille and Robert’s daughter gave us the house,” I explained.
“Some gift,” Janet said, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah.” I tried not to think about what she’d hoped to give us—the house and so much more.
“More lox?” Allen asked, pushing the little board toward me. We’d sliced onions and tomatoes and dressed our bagels with lox and capers.
“I’m good,” I said, leaning back in the chair.
“So what happens now?” Janet asked.
“Well,” I said. “I guess I get some version of my job back. At a lower salary and a lesser title.”
Janet cringed. “Yeah, sorry. I tried to tell them you were coming back.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine. I upended pens when I left.”
She nodded. She knew what our office was like. “I heard about that.”
Allen laughed. “That a pretty big deal?”
“Oh yeah,” Janet confirmed. “She might as well have come in with a blowtorch.”
“So anyway, I guess I’ll just go to work tomorrow. See if anyone knows someone who needs a roommate.” Even as I said it, my soul seemed to shrivel inside me. I was a thirty-five year old woman. I wanted a family, a house, a dog. I didn’t want to share a one-bedroom apartment with a stranger. But this was my life. I couldn’t live with my mother forever.
35
Lottie Gets Mad
Michael
Ididn’t sleep much. Saying you were going to do something was very different from actually figuring out what the thing you needed to do might be. And when the sun rose the day after Halloween, I wasn’t much closer to figuring it out. I needed help.
So when Dan woke up, we walked down the hill to the Muffin Tin, and went inside, beckoned by the scent of cinnamon and pumpkin spice. Lottie was behind the counter as usual, though there was no sign of Addie, and I realized I’d hoped maybe I could just show up, say something off the cuff and fix everything. But it didn’t seem like that was going to happen.
Lottie’s eyes lit when they fell on Dan, but her brows lowered as she looked at me.
“Daniel,” she said, still frowning at me. “It’s so nice to see you again. What can I get for you?”
Daniel ordered a hot chocolate and a pumpkin spice muffin, and Lottie served it up, avoiding my gaze entirely. She smiled sweetly at Dan.
“I guess I’ll have a black coffee and one of those muffins too,” I said.
“I don’t think you will,” she told me.
I laughed. What else could you do when the proprietor of the bakery refused to serve you? “Seriously?”
“I’m mad at you.”
“Clearly.”
Dan wandered to the window with his breakfast, and I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling exhausted.
“She left,” Lottie said, her voice sounding more sad than angry now. “And it’s your fault.”
“She left? Already?” All the ideas I’d had about bumping into Addie in town before she left for New York fizzed away.
