I offered a smile, “It’s nice to meet you, Garrett.”
His name had barely left my lips before he twisted back toward his porch. Well, alrighty then. I watched him go, not at all noticing his perfectly toned ass as he walked up his stairs and through his front door.
I honestly wasn’t sure what to do with myself. People like Kathy I was used to, but that? He’d just dismissed me like I’d handed him a pamphlet about my Lord and Savior rather than his own damn mail.
Shunned by two neighbors in one day. That might be a new record.
I made my way back into my house, ripping my ruined socks off the second I stepped through the doorway. I couldn’t hear the shower going, so Jamie was set to walk out any minute.
I grabbed a new pair from my dresser and opened up my planner, plotting my assignments for the night. Tonight wouldn’t be so bad, I might actually hit six hours of sleep for once.
I was heading back down the hall when the sound of my ringtone echoed from the kitchen. Assuming it was my mother calling to finish our conversation, I took my time walking over and picking it up.
Caller ID: Don’t Answer.
My fingers gripped the phone so tight my knuckles turned white and every muscle in my body locked. I stared at the two words I’d replaced his name with, no longer hearing the ringing. Why was he calling? What did he want?
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring at the phone screen, long after it’d gone to voicemail before Jamie’s voice yanked me out of my funk. “Mom?”
Shaking my head, I glanced up to see steam pouring out around him like a graveyard scene in an old horror film. “Sorry, bud, I zoned out. You ready to play?”
“You mean, am I ready to destroy you? Yep.”
“Bring it, short stack.”
Chapter Three
“All right, there’s Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deut—Deuter—”
“Deuteronomy?”
“Right, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel…”
I clicked on my blinker, listening to Jamie rattle off the rest of the books, trying not to chuckle at his pronunciation of Ecclesiastes. He’d been stressed out all morning about a math test he had, so to distract him, I’d challenged him to see if he could remember all of books of the Old Testament in chronological order.
His school had made him learn them back when he was in kindergarten, and I was honestly impressed that he still knew them. Although, truth be told, I didn’t know them so if he messed up, I wouldn’t know.
“See, told you I knew ’em.”
I darted a look over my shoulder, “Yeah, yeah. You know, the amount of random information you have stored in your brain is honestly alarming.” I barely remembered the details on a court case an hour after reading it, and here he was remembering useless names he’d memorized years ago.
Jamie was a student at a private Christian academy a few minutes across town, but not because we attended the church. We weren’t not religious; we just weren’t devout either. I’d been raised Catholic my entire childhood, but I hadn’t set foot in a church since graduating high school. The only reason he was enrolled there was because it was the best school in the area, bar none.
I remembered being ecstatic when Jamie had turned five and was finally old enough to start public school. I was beyond ready to save the hundreds I’d been spending on daycare each month, but the school district we’d lived in was in a shady part of town. And I don’t mean a little shady, I mean, at one point I’d received a phone call informing me a man with a gun had led police on a wild chase through the play yard.
No, thank you.
So, I’d registered him at the academy, paid the non-refundable enrollment fee, considered selling my left boob to afford it, and plopped his butt in private school. It was actually the main reason I worked the hours I did. The monthly tuition alone cost more than half my rent. But I couldn’t regret my choice.
I pulled into the lot, circling around to the front, mentally cheering when there wasn’t a long line in the car rider lane. “Good luck on your test, bud. I know you can do it, and no matter what, you’re awesome!”
“Thanks, Mom. Bye.” He snatched his bag and jumped out of our old, white Jeep, slamming the door behind him.
I immediately rolled down my passenger side window, “I love you!”
His shoulders scrunched around his ears, and he spun slowly to look at me, eyes wide, like I didn’t do this to him regularly. Muttering a quick, “Love you too,” he took off in a power walk that rivaled grandmas doing rounds at the mall.
I chuckled, not feeling at all guilty for the things I made my kid put up with. He wasn’t scared to throw it back at me. I switched off the orchestra music he’d been listening to and clicked aimlessly through stations before turning it off. I wasn’t a fan of morning shows, and it was nearly impossible to find a station playing only music this early in the day.
Luckily, it didn’t take me long to get to my weekday job. Living in a town of around 21,000 people had its perks. I didn’t desire the congestion and traffic of a larger city at all.
I parked next to my boss, taking a deep breath and holding it in for as long as I could before exhaling. I actually enjoyed this job a lot, and I loved Evaline, my boss, but desk jobs were difficult when you didn’t sleep much.
I grabbed my heels from behind the middle console, swapping out the flats I’d been wearing. Hopping out of the Jeep, I adjusted my black pencil skirt, pulling it down and making sure everything was covered and in place.
My white button-up blouse was a little wrinkled, but I could look worse. It was nearly impossible to keep my clothes from wrinkling when I had to travel to do laundry and didn’t own an iron. Evaline was used to it.
I worked for the security side of a sister company business. One side handled security, private investigations, and running background checks, while the other side handled home and business alarms. Our side happened to be in the middle of renovations, so I’d been having to use the alarm side’s door. And I hated it.
“Good morning, Madison dear, how are you today?”
Swallowing down the anxiety I always felt walking through their side, I smiled down at the seventy-year-old, white-haired woman who loved red lipstick and handled the front desk. “Good morning, Ruth.”
Ruth had worked for the company for the past thirty years but had recently dropped to part time. She hadn’t officially announced it yet, but she’d hinted she was ready to retire. I’d almost cried, knowing their side would make me take over her job rather than hire someone new.
I enjoyed working for Evaline, but she was a close family friend of the man heading the alarm side. So she had no qualms with sharing me and still expecting me to keep up with my current responsibilities. Her trust in my abilities was forty percent comforting, sixty percent frustrating.
“How’s the little one?”
I smiled, loving how Ruth still referred to my son as little. It was nice to know someone else didn’t like him growing up. “He’s good, thank you.”
I passed through the lobby, inwardly cringing at the prospect of walking by a certain desk that faced the hall. The one and only hall leading to my side of the building.
I turned the corner and didn’t even try to hide my heavy sigh when the desk sat unoccupied. My relief was staggering. But I made sure to speed up anyway, taking advantage of his absence. He never took a day off, so he was hiding around here somewhere. I had no intention of running into him if I could help it.
Tossing my purse under my desk, I signed into my computer, spinning my chair in circles aimlessly while I waited for it to log me in.
“Madison, is that you?” a soft voice laced with a hint of a southern accent called out.
“Yes, ma’am.”