Page 7 of Single Pucking Orc

“You lent it to Denise.”

A pause.

“In April,” she added. “For the church supper.”

“Denise,” her mother said with deep satisfaction, as though Nora had solved a mystery rather than merely remembered something her mother had forgotten. “Of course. That’s a relief. How are you, baby? You sound uptight.”

“I’m working.”

“You’re always working.”

“That’s how the work gets done, Mom.”

Her mother laughed, entirely unbothered. Nora could hear something being stirred in the background and, farther away, music. Her mother was forty-nine and lived in a rented cottage twenty minutes north of town with an alarming number of scarves and a cat that had apparently belonged to the previous tenant and simply declined to move out. Her mother had never once in Nora’s memory arrived anywhere early. She had also never once failed to notice when her daughter was upset.

“So what happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

Her mother didn’t say anything, but Nora knew she wasn’t going to give up.

“My neighbor has a baby,” she said finally.

“The enormous handsome one?”

“I never said he was handsome.”

“You’ve described him to me eleven times.”

“I’ve described the noise eleven times.”

“You described his shoulders, honey.”

She closed her eyes. “Once. In passing. As part of a larger complaint.”

Her mother made a sound Nora had been hearing since childhood and had yet to enjoy.

“A baby,” her mother added. “How lovely.”

“It isn’t lovely. Well, the baby is lovely. Obviously. But the situation is a catastrophe. He didn’t even know she existed until today.”

“Oh, the poor male.”

That stopped her.

“He came home with an entire truck full of baby equipment,” she said, because for some reason that seemed relevant.

“Then it sounds as though he’s figuring it out.”

“He’s a professional hockey player. He travels. He has practice. Games. A baby needs schedules and childcare and pediatricians and approximately nine thousand other things he probably hasn’t even thought of yet.”

“Neither have most parents when they get the baby,” her mother pointed out.

“That’s different.”

Her mother hummed, unconvinced.

“He came over last October to borrow an egg,” Nora added.