Lock and Key(43)
Author: Sarah Dessen

It was tempting to point out that Cora herself wasn’t exactly in a position to claim to know me that well. But I held my tongue, still folding.

“Anyway,” she continued, “in the future, though, if you could let us know when you were having people over, I’d appreciate it.”

Like I’d had so many people showing up—all one of them!—that this was suddenly a problem. “I didn’t know she was coming,” I told her. “I forgot she even knew where I was staying.”

She nodded. “Well, just keep it in mind. For next time.”

Next time, I thought. Whatever. “Sure,” I said aloud.

I kept folding, waiting for her to say something else. To go further, insinuating more, pulling me into an argument I didn’t deserve, much less want to have. But instead, she just stepped back out of the doorway and started down the hall to her own room. A moment later, she called out for me to sleep well, and I responded in kind, these nicer last words delivered like an afterthought to find themselves, somewhere, in the space between us.

Chapter Seven

Usually I worked for Harriet from three thirty till seven, during which time she was supposed to take off to eat a late lunch and run errands. Invariably, however, she ended up sticking around for most of my shift, her purse in hand as she fretted and puttered, unable to actually leave.

“I’m sorry,” she’d say, reaching past me to adjust a necklace display I’d already straightened twice. “It’s just . . . I like things a certain way, you know?”

I knew. Harriet had built her business from the ground up, starting straight out of art school, and the process had been difficult, involving struggle, the occasional compromise of artistic integrity, and a near brush with bankruptcy. Still, she’d soldiered on, just her against the world. Which was why, I figured, it was so hard for her to adjust to the fact that now there were two of us.

Still, sometimes her neurosis was so annoying—following along behind me, checking and redoing each thing I did, taking over every task so I sometimes spent entire shifts doing nothing at all—that I wondered why she’d bothered to hire me. One day, when she had literally let me do nothing but dust for hours, I finally asked her.

“Truth?” she said. I nodded. “I’m overwhelmed. My orders are backed up, I’m constantly behind in my books, and I’m completely exhausted. If it wasn’t for caffeine, I’d be dead right now.”

“Then let me help you.”

“I’m trying.” She took a sip from her ever-present coffee cup. “But it’s hard. Like I said, I’ve always been a one-woman operation. That way, I’m responsible for everything, good and bad. And I’m afraid if I relinquish any control . . .”

I waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, I said, “You’ll lose everything.”

Her eyes widened. “Yes!” she said. “How did you know?”

Like I was going to go there. “Lucky guess,” I said instead.

“This business is the only thing I’ve ever had that was all mine,” she said. “I’m scared to death something will happen to it.”

“Yeah,” I said as she took another gulp of coffee, “but accepting help doesn’t have to mean giving up control.”

It occurred to me, saying this, that I should take my own advice. Thinking back over the last few weeks, however— staying at Cora’s, my college deal with Jamie—I realized maybe I already had.

Harriet was so obsessed with her business that, from what I could tell, she had no personal life whatsoever. During the day, she worked at the kiosk; at night, she went straight home, where she stayed up into the early hours making more pieces. Maybe this was how she wanted it. But there were clearly others who would welcome a change.

Like Reggie from Vitamin Me, for example. When he was going for food, he always stopped to see if she needed anything. If things were slow, he’d drift over to the open space between our two stalls to shoot the breeze. When Harriet said she was tired, he instantly offered up B-COMPLEXES; if she sneezed, he was like a quick draw with the echinacea. One day after he’d brought her an herbal tea and some ginkgo biloba—she’d been complaining she couldn’t remember anything anymore—she said, “He’s just so nice. I don’t know why he goes to so much trouble.”

“Because he likes you,” I said.

She jerked her head, surprised, and looked at me. “What? ”

“He likes you,” I repeated. To me, this was a no-brainer, as obvious as daylight. “You know that.”

“Reggie?” she’d said, her surprised tone making it clear she did not. “No, no. We’re just friends.”

“The man gave you ginkgo,” I pointed out. “Friends don’t do that.”

“Of course they do.”

“Harriet, come on.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I mean, we’re friends, but the idea of something more is just . . .” she said, continuing to thumb through the receipts. Then, suddenly, she looked up at me, then over at Reggie, who was helping some woman with some protein powder. “Oh my God. Do you really think?”

“Yes,” I said flatly, eyeing the ginkgo, which he’d piled neatly on the register with a note. Signed with a smiley face. “I do.”

“Well, that’s just ridiculous,” she said, her face flushing.

“Why? Reggie’s nice.”

“I don’t have time for a relationship,” she said, picking up her coffee and taking a gulp. The ginkgo she now eyed warily, like it was a time bomb, not a supplement. “It’s almost Christmas. That’s my busiest time of the year.”

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

“There’s just no way,” she said flatly, shaking her head.

“Why not?”

“Because it won’t work.” She banged open the register drawer, sliding in the receipts. “Right now, I can only focus on myself and this business. Everything else is a distraction.”

I was about to tell her this didn’t have to be true, necessarily. That she and Reggie already had a relationship: they were friends, and she could just see how it went from there. But really, I had to respect where she was coming from, even if in this case I didn’t agree with it. After all, I’d been determined to be a one-woman operation, as well, although lately this had been harder than you’d think. I’d found this out firsthand a few days earlier, when I was in the kitchen with Cora, minding my own business, and suddenly found myself swept up in Jamie’s holiday plans.