[Reviews - 122]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Microsoft Word Chapter or Story |
Printer Chapter or Story |
ePub eBook Chapter or Story |

Has been viewed 10480 times

- Text Size +




Martha’s Vineyard, 1:15AM :

She was burning the midnight oil again. That made six nights in a row.

Ororo yawned and stretched, leaning as far back in her tilting chair as she could go. Her eyes were so tired and dry that they ached, but that last paragraph was dogging her. Mocking her.

I’m the boss. Not you. It was just a paragraph. A clump of words on a page. How hard could that be?

The answer was staring her in the face, cursor blinking from the white glare of her screen. Shit. She got up and padded to the kitchen to make herself some cocoa.

The faint sound of a foghorn moaned in the distance. Ororo shivered against a faint draft working its way inside through the slats of the window over the sink. She made a brief detour to the laundry room and grabbed one of several “doorsnakes” she’d prepared a month ago, wincing at how cold it felt in her hands. The sand inside the long wool sock shifted as she squeezed it, deciding it was long enough to do the job as she laid it on the sill, covering the crack seam. Much better.

Deadlines sucked.

Ororo assembled her favorite mug that featured an old school Wonder Woman in her seventies “Superfriends” uniform standing proudly with her hands on her hips, along with some two percent milk and the Hershey’s unsweetened powder. She just wasn’t a Swiss Miss girl. She heated up the small saucepan on her gas stove’s back burner while she looked for the vanilla extract and cinnamon.

She nearly dropped the milk back onto the counter as something slick and furry slithered against her ankles.

“Mrowr,” Giblet whined, flicking her tail back and forth.

“Shit! Don’t do that,” Ororo scolded, getting nothing but loud, hungry purrs in response. “Don’t suck up to me, pal. That won’t work.” That was a lie; her cat was so spoiled. Reptilian yellow eyes blinked up at her while she threw the ingredients into the pot. She sighed and took down a tiny, chipped saucer she’d scored at the flea market outside Pocasset, dribbling a few drops’ worth of milk onto it and handing it down to her cat. Giblet was already pawing it at it before it even touched the floor. She was assailed by even more purring and the faint lapping sounds of her cat’s tongue. “Greedy little thing.” Ororo plopped two sugar cubes into her cup and waited for the milk to boil.

A big chunk of her advance already went toward paying off her car. Her balloon payment was next. Easy come, easy go. She just couldn’t bear to part with her house.

Ororo fell in love with the Colonial-style two-bedroom house the moment she set foot on the slightly creaky porch. It was surrounded by sand and beach grass and offered a gorgeous view of the water. The sand, salt and wind were hell on her car, but you didn’t give up a chance to live on the Vineyard, and the property itself was a gold mine. Her enormous picture window was the focus of her living room, cluttered with an array of stained glass suncatchers, antique glass bottles (also scored at the flea market), seashells, and a piece of lead crystal that Ali gave her for her birthday. It was too late to see the prisms, obviously, but it was her favorite piece.

She smelled the milk burning slightly, tearing from her musings. She hissed with disgust and poured it into her cup, skimming off the thin skin with her spoon. A small plate of vanilla sugar wafers accompanied her back to her office. The night wasn’t getting any shorter. It was time to whip that chapter into shape.

If there was one thing about Zoe that Mick would take with him to the grave, it was that crooked smile and how it caressed him one last time when he waved goodbye. A man only loved like that once. Lightning only struck twice in the science books. Ororo checked what she wrote and corrected a typo. He was about to be proven wrong.

Minutes later, Ororo’s PC was turned off and she was making her drowsy way upstairs, Giblet dogging her heels. She fumbled in the dark for the upright, padded stand she used for her reading glasses, folding them and putting them away.

She’d just finished saying her prayers and turning down the duvet when she heard a low howl from outside, low and chilling. As if she, too, found it unsettling, Giblet darted under the covers, promptly curling into Ororo’s armpit. Spoiled cat…





You must login () to review.