Читать книгу Tiger Lilly - Sharon Vander Meer - Страница 4

Lilly was frantic. She had overslept and was fretting about breakfast for her guests the whole time she was in the shower and getting dressed. She needn’t have worried. Annie was at the stove scrambling eggs when she entered the kitchen. Marie was chattering, Alex was barely awake and Caleb was looking disgruntled. It was as if the tears and nocturnal wanderings of the night before had never happened.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Annie said. “I don’t want you to think we expect you to wait on us. We can do for ourselves. Right kids?”

The “kids” were gathered around the kitchen table and had gone silent the second Lilly walked in. Caleb was the first to speak.

“I was rude to you last night. I am sorry.”

Lilly noted that he’d cleaned up a little but he still wore the garbage dump garb from the previous day.

“You were tired; we all were.” It was the best she could do in the way of forgiveness. She was sure his mother had forced him to make the apology.

“Would you like eggs?” Annie asked.

“Thank you, but, no, I’m late for work.”

“She looks too old to work.” It was the first fully formed sentence Alex had voiced and after a startled moment Lilly smiled tightly.

“I feeltoo old, by golly, but off to work it is.” She turned to Annie trying hard not to show how nervous it made her to leave these strangers alone in her house. It would only be for five hours, the length of her shift, but a lot of bad things could happen in five hours. “You don’t mind, do you? I tried to change my schedule so I could help you get settled in (and establish a few house rules),but…”

“We’ll be fine,” Annie said. “Won’t we?” She cast a glance at her three children.

Lilly didn’t expect a response from the silent audience and wasn’t surprised when none was forthcoming.

“Well, I’ll be on my way. I can’t take calls at the store unless it’s an emergency, but I’ll write the number down in case you need to reach me.”

When she went to get a piece of paper from the pad by the phone, she saw the note she’d written to herself about the names of the children and their ages. For no reason she could think of, heat rose up her neck.

“Why, I can leave notes to myself all over the place and it wouldn’t be anybody’s business!” she thought.

Still she felt uncomfortable that other people could look at the orderliness of her life and find something about it to criticize. She stuffed the page in the pocket of her ShopMart smock, and then wrote down the store number hoping Annie wasn’t the type to think everything was an emergency.

“Don’t you got a cell phone?” Marie asked. “We hadda cell phone but we couldn’t pay the bill.”

Annie closed her eyes and shook her head, not in denial, Lilly thought, but in resignation.

Lilly pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Well, child, it is a consideration, but I don’t have a cell phone because I don’t want one. Never could see the use of the doggone things.”

Marie looked ready to say something else but Caleb leaned over and whispered something in her ear.

“Momma, Caleb called me a baby!”

“I did not! I said quit acting like a baby.”

Alex started to whine.

“Okay, kids, enough.” Annie’s words were spoken softly but the children immediately lapsed into silence. She smiled at Lilly, a sweet curve of her lips that helped to relieve the look of wariness imprinted on her face.

“Thanks for leaving me the number. I’m sure we’ll be fine and we will be careful of your home.”

Lilly felt as though the young woman had sensed her concerns. It did not relieve her one whit. She nodded and opened the door to the garage to be greeted by a bounding behemoth. He whipped past her and into the house propelling everyone else into motion.

“Krank!” Caleb shouted running after him.

“Get him!” Annie cried, her attention torn between the pan of scrambled eggs on the electric burner and the chaos popping up all around her. Marie was on Caleb’s heels yelling, “Come here, boy,” at the top of her lungs. Alex started to cry.

In a dither about what to do Lilly wavered in the doorway wanting to protect her home from the crazy animal galloping through it and the need to get to work on time. ShopMart wasn’t a forgiving employer and in a small town there were lots of people waiting for the next job opening.

“I have to go,” she said, sounding apologetic even to her own ears. What she should have said is, “This place better be clean and in one piece when I get home!”

Lilly stepped into the garage pawing through her purse for her car keys, her nose twitching madly. She sneezed. What in this world? She flipped on the light switch and yelped. The sound of running feet came from the kitchen and in seconds Annie was behind her in the doorway.

“Oh, my,” Annie said. “Oh, my, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

The garage was a shambles. The dog had overturned the rollout garbage can and scattered its contents, eating anything edible and sicking up what couldn’t be digested. He had then turned his attention to storage boxes, worrying them open and taking out whatever was inside. Elizabeth’s Barbie doll collection that nobody had looked at in years was scattered from hell and gone. Several of Michael’s Transformers lay in pieces and Match Box cars were strewn across the floor along with strips of track. Clothing she had been intending to take to the Salvation Army was everywhere. How the danged dog had done it without waking the entire household was a mystery. Maybe that barking was an almighty distraction to cover his crimes!

Lilly closed her eyes tightly and opened them slowly. Still there. This nightmare was just beginning. Without a word she walked to her car, stepping over a pile of dog you-know-what on the way. She opened the door, closed it with deliberate care, put her key in the ignition, pressed the remote garage opener, backed out and danged near hit a sporty and altogether unexpected older model Mustang blocking the driveway.

In the rearview mirror she saw Annie run behind her, hop in the car and back the Mustang out of her way. Annie gave a feeble wave as Lilly roared past in reverse, jerked to a tire-screeching stop, put the car in drive and took off peeling rubber all the way to the stop sign where her squealing brakes drew the attention of her neighbor, Luke Southern, who was getting in his car. She ignored his wave as heat flooded her cheeks.