Eddie Listens In

Eddie was still sitting on a milk crate near the wall when she walked in the door. He sat with the glass in hand, hanging between his legs. When she walked in, he looked up at her and shrugged. It was obvious that he'd heard every word. The corners of his mouth were turned down. His eyes were big, like he'd just witnessed a car accident or seen a ghost. She sat down beside him and took the glass.

"Did you hear it all?" she asked.

Eddie nodded.

"Do you think we can find her?"

Eddie nodded.

"I'm not going to get any help from Daniel."

Eddie shook his head slowly.

She stared at the glass in her hand. "You know," she said. "Talking to Daniel just now was a little like eating glass."

Eddie got on his knees and turned to face her. He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "Babe," he said. "Don't take this the wrong way." He lowered his chin and looked up at her with wide puppy eyes.

"But you kind of like the taste of blood in your mouth."

She could have reacted by throwing the glass, or taking a bit out of it and spitting it at him. She could have screamed and thrown her hands up and stomped around the house. She could have gotten angry. She could have denied it. Instead, she thought of all the difficult tasks she took on, including her boyfriend and her high maintenance tenants. She thought about how she was taking on the task of finding the little girl. She'd have to decide what to do with her once she did find her. The options were bleak: police, Daniel, kidnap the kid herself.

The Professor

Each girl met her independently. Gigi met her at the coffee shop. Angela met her in class. Joely met with her for academic advising because she was thinking of taking contemporary literature courses. The professor assured her that she could find a job and that she would have a future if she declared a major in the humanities. Angela didn't care about career paths. She just wanted to read poetry. Gigi heard her speak and thought she recognized something in her voice. It sounded like the twang from her hometown. She'd been homesick for months. She poured the professor a fresh cup of coffee and asked her, "Where are you from?"

It turned out that the professor was from a place about an hour's drive from Gigi's parents' house. Gigi ended up sitting with the professor that day, which almost got her fired. She sat down at the table and they talked about books.

A lot of those titles were scattered at her feet in the storage unit where she stood across from a dead baby. Gigi looked at the other girls and wondered if they'd known the professor better than she did. Before the baby, Gigi would have said, "No way." She thought she understood something about the professor that no one else would or could. Gigi knew where she was from. Gigi knew the place way beyond its name or location. She knew it. And she thought that made her know the professor more intimately, too.

The professor was simply an older version of who she wanted to be. Or at least, that's what Gigi believed from the moment she met her. She signed up for her classes and she sought her advice on everything from boyfriends to savings accounts. Gigi read the books the professor gave her and listened to the music the professor mentioned loving. She was an eager student, and the professor liked an enthusiastic learner.

Angela was an enthusiastic learner.

He Took Her

Ginger waited while Daniel sobbed. She bounced her knee for a while. She nodded her head, up and down, for a while.. She looked around her yard. Finally, when Daniel's tears started to let up a little, she leaned over and put her hands on his cheeks.

"You took her where?" Ginger asked.

Eddie had gone back inside and the streetlights came on. They were alone on the block. No one was witness to the slap she gave him when he took too long to answer. It startled him. He put his hand over the spot where it stung. Ginger took him by the shoulders and shook him.

"You took her where!?" she shouted.

"I didn't take her now," Daniel whispered. He glanced up at her door to make sure Eddie wasn't coming back outside at the sound of the slap.

"I took her and we came here," he said. After hearing himself say what he'd done, however vaguely, Daniel stood up quickly. Ginger rose with him.

"Maybe the police found her," he said. Ginger's head started to hurt.

"Or maybe she went home," he said. He seemed pretty excited at the second option.

"Where's home?" Ginger asked, suddenly aching. She was pretty sure that her property, that duplex, with the yard they were standing in - she was pretty sure that was home for the little girl.

"With her mother," Daniel said to his feet. "She's not gone. She came home one day and we were gone."

Ginger stepped away from him. She walked over to the bush, to the spot where she noticed the little girl on the day she and Daniel walked into Ginger's life. Ginger turned to look at the man, the father, her tenant. She thought of her own parents as she turned away from Daniel to look at her property. She spent a lot of time restoring it. She really loved it. She loved it so much she heard a deep, guttural groan escape from her lips.

She loved it. The only obvious remedy was to move far, far away from it.

But first, the little girl. And Daniel. She didn't know them, not really. She wasn't sure about their names, even. She shook her head.

"Let's go inside," she said. She took Daniel by the elbow and led him into his half of her house. She was fairly certain that if the police had picked up the little girl, they'd have arrested Daniel by now.

"We'll find her," Ginger said. Daniel didn't look very sure.

"I'll find her," Ginger said. She was good at finding things: tools, tenants, properties to own. She had a method. She simply drove around until she saw a sign.

Missing

When Ginger pulled into the driveway, she knew immediately that something was...amiss. She put both feet on the ground and stood slowly, turning slightly and then placing her hands on the top of her car. Daniel was in the yard screaming at Eddie, who held his hands up like a clueless criminal. He was standing on the porch near Ginger's front door. The overgrown bush separated him from the hysterical man, who whipped around and pointed his finger at Ginger.

"You!" he screamed. "You can't just take her."

She understood the scene all too quickly. The little girl must be gone, and Daniel would have assumed that she was either at Ginger's or with Ginger. Her face became a grimace that Eddie must have noticed, because he threw his head back. The three of them each felt hopeless, but wouldn't unite in their despair. Daniel needed to point fingers. Apparently literally. Ginger needed to figure out why the little girl was gone, and how, and where. Eddie wanted to go back inside and finish his dinner, maybe play a little guitar, caulk a sink or something and go to bed.

"Daniel," she said as she carefully closed her car door. "I didn't take her."

He was still pointing at her. Then he pointed to her passenger seat. Then at her again.

"When did you notice that she was gone?" Ginger asked as she took a step toward him. She could see Eddie out of the corner of her eye. He dropped his arms and let them hang reluctantly at his side. He tilted his head in disbelief. Playing along or soothing Daniel may not have been the absolute best idea, but she didn't think aggravating him further would help anyone. Least of all the little girl.

His face was red and his eyes were swollen and wet. He was in a panic. "Where is she?" he yelled in Ginger's direction.

"I don't know," Ginger said. She looked at her watch. Usually at this time of night, the little girl was eating dinner - either with her or Daniel. Last night, the little girl had dinner with her. She ate a bowl of peas with butter melted over them. She asked Ginger if she liked her parents. Ginger said yes.

"They taught me how to do a lot of this stuff," she told the little girl and waved her hand over her head to indicate all the renovation work. "We had this house when I was a kid," she told the little girl. "And we worked on it until we loved it."

The little girl's face had softened, and Ginger could have quit the story there, at the happily-ever-after part. But, she didn't, because she wouldn't, and because both she and the little girl deserved better. Ginger liked to live with the painful, obvious, hilarious truth.

"And as soon as we loved it, my folks moved 5,000 miles away from it," Ginger said.

The little girl paused, the spoon hovering just below her open mouth. She held Ginger's eye contact for half a minute or so, and then they both started laughing. They giggled. They guffawed. They howled at the moon.

It was just dark enough that the moon was making an appearance in the night sky. Ginger sighed. She lost all will to remain gentle and walked over to Daniel and grabbed him by the collar. She half led, half dragged him over to the step, where she shoved him down to sit. She motioned for Eddie to go get a phone by making the appropriate hand gesture with her pinky pointed toward her mouth and her thumb pointed toward her ear.

She sat beside Daniel. "Where would she go?" she asked.

Daniel shrugged.

"Has she ever done this before?" she asked.

Daniel shook his head.

"Could someone have taken her?" she asked.

Daniel started to sob. From beneath the cries, she heard him say, "No."

"Is that an answer?" she asked. "Does that mean someone didn't take her?"

Daniel screamed. It came from deep within his gut. It got caught on his crying. It made Eddie stop in his tracks. He didn't want to come any closer, so he put the receiver on the porch and pushed it toward Ginger with his foot.

She grabbed it and started to call the police, but Daniel smacked it from her hands. It landed in the yard with a thud.

"What the hell?" she said, still staring at the phone in disbelief.

"I took her," Daniel whined. He choked a little before he looked Ginger in the eyes and whispered, "I took her."

Rental Agreement

Ginger was unpacking the small bag of tile samples for the kitchen when she heard a crash and a howl come from the front porch. She opened the door slowly, with caution, to see a handsome man backing down the step. He stopped in the yard and brushed the front of his pants with both hands.

"Are you alright?" She called out to him.

She startled him, and he turned around quickly, almost in a complete circle, before he saw her. He pointed at her and she took a step toward him.

"I was looking at the sign," he said.

The red and white "For Rent" sign was in the window, and it looked as if he tripped over a few loose bricks and stray painting accessories she left lying in front of it. She walked across the porch and joined him in the yard.

"Are you interested in the apartment?" she asked as she approached him. Once she was closer, she realized he was as handsome as she thought. His face was friendly, and he smiled when she offered her hand to shake. He reached out to take it when she noticed the little girl standing behind him, near the bush that ran the length of the porch. It was a tall bush, taller than the little girl. Ginger shook the man's hand while the little girl gave the bush a nonchalant kick.

"How many bedrooms does it have?" the man asked. While Ginger gave him the details - two bedrooms, one bath, nice kitchen with a view - the little girl kicked at the bush again.

"How much does it rent for?" the man asked. Ginger answered.

The man shook his head. "I can't afford that," he said.

"What do you do?" Ginger asked.

"I teach physics over at the college," he said. "My schedule is all over the place. Sometimes I tutor kids in math."

"That doesn't pay well?" Ginger asked. The little girl kicked again and a bit of shrubbery fell to the ground.

"You'd be surprised," he said. "My name is Daniel, by the way."

"Ginger," she said.

"What's the landlord like?" Daniel asked.

Ginger smiled. "The landlord is fair," she said.

The little girl looked over at Ginger, and in that second, Ginger recognized her. It was the little girl her gave her the finger, who put all that energy into flipping her the bird, as she drove by the other day. The little girl went back to what she was doing. She kicked at the bush again, but instead of causing the bush any damage, her foot caught in a branch and she fell flat on her back.

"Honey," Daniel said as he lunged toward the child, "are you alright?"

The little girl stood up and brushed her legs with both hands. She glared at Ginger for another second. Ginger could feel the little girl's hostility. That kid wanted to flip her off again. Her, or anyone. It didn't matter. Daniel just turned to look at Ginger and smiled a half-hearted, exhausted smile.

"How much can you afford?" Ginger asked.

Card to Folks

Every year, she sent her parents a joint birthday card, even though her mother was born in May and her father was born in September. Ginger took pictures of her properties and made a collage, then wrote a little update. She mentioned how much she paid for each property and what renovations she made to each. Then she wrote out the birthday poem that her father started when she was little and through the years became a family tradition:

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
You're getting older.
And I am, too.

When her parents sent her a birthday card, they wrote out the same poem. Every time Ginger wrote it out, she missed them terribly.

After years of buying and fixing up properties all around the lower part of the state, her father decided he was tired of catering to the upper middle class. He was tired of using his skills solely for profit. Her mother agreed. They decided that instead of retiring, they'd try pioneer life. They sold off most of their properties except the larger units, and they let a management company take care of those. Ginger was able to purchase the house she grew up in, which she was slowly renovating. It was taking her more time than any other house or apartment she'd ever worked on. Some days she wanted to gut it and other days she wanted to preserve it.

"Burn it," her father advised from the two room cabin he shared with her mother in the Alaskan wilderness. It became his salutation, his sign off, before he signed his letters to his daughter. Instead of "Sincerely," he wrote, "Burn it." And he always meant the family home.

It wasn't fancy. It was a simple three bedroom ranch with a few mid-century modern touches, although not enough to entice an enthusiast. The yard was small. The back steps were crumbling. There was water damage in the garage. The basement was always damp. But every time Ginger walked into the kitchen, she thought of the first time she ripped up carpet, the first time she measured for appliances, and the first time she fitted face plates on the light switches and electrical outlets. She wasn't quite ten years old.

"You're getting pretty good at that," her father said as she turned the tiny screwdriver to secure the tiny screw which held the plate in place.

"By the time we're done here," her mother said, "she'll be a master at it."

The face plates were plastic numbers made to look like paneling or wood. By the time her parents moved far away, the face plates were outdated. They were old. And Ginger was getting older, too.

But she didn't think that was a good reason to demolish the dwelling. Even if, as her mother said, "It's sometimes easier to start from scratch."

Instead, she let the house sit and wait for her to decide what to do.

Storage Unit

Gigi tossed the key up with her right hand and caught it with her left. She kept throwing it into the air and snatching it out of the air all the way from the car to the storage unit. The three women had to make three trips because they kept getting lost, kept needing to back track, kept needing to count their way back to their new unit, their professor's last gift to them.

Once they found it, Angela snatched the key from the air and away from Gigi, who pouted, briefly, before shifting her weight back and forth from foot to foot and sighing loudly while Angela struggled with the padlock. Finally, Joely took over and with one quick twist, the lock clicked and popped off the handle. All three women took a step back. Angela looked at Gigi. Joely looked at Angela.

"Go ahead," Joely and Angela said in unison. Gigi shook her head, and the three women stood in silence.

"Okay," Gigi said. She wrapped her fingers around the handle and pulled the garage door up. Angela took the flashlights from her pockets and gave one to each girl.

"Close the door behind us," Angela said. Gigi pulled the door back down, and the girls directed the light onto the contents of the unit.

Mostly, they saw boxes. But, in one corner, behind a collection of books stacked as tall as Joely and wide as a Buick, was a peculiar assortment of furniture. A little end table sat beside a rocking chair. Beside the rocking chair was a bassinet covered in white with a fancy, frilly ruffle adorning the canopy. An old oil lamp and an antique tin of talcum powder sat on the end table. The bassinet was filled with stuffed animals, which Gigi started to pick up and examine.

"I wonder if these were her's as a child," she said.

"You can keep them," Angela said.

"What if I don't want them?" Gigi asked.

"We'll take them to the Goodwill," Joely said. She sat down in the rocking chair and pushed back. She let herself fall into the rhythm of the rocker: back and forward, back and forward.

"I'll take the chair," she said.

"What about the bassinet?" Angela asked. Both she and Joely already had babies who were well past the baby furniture age. She didn't think Gigi would ever have children, but she might want to keep the animals in the same place their professor did. Angela studies the bassinet from behind Joely in the rocking chair. She only looked up when Gigi gasped.

Gigi dropped the animals in her hands. She stepped back into the wall of books, which collapsed immediately upon contact. She jumped. She let out a little scream.

"What the Hell?" Joely said and stepped forward to look inside the bassinet. She gasped, too, and turned to look at Angela.

Angela made her way over slowly. When she glanced down, she saw a dark figure, maybe a stuffed animal. She took a deep breath and looked down again. She thought she was looking at a rodent or a taxidermy item. It looked like it might possibly be a reptile. She shrugged and looked up at Joely and Gigi, who were standing across from her, the canopy separating them. Joely and Gigi both directed the beams of light from their flashlights onto the figure in the bassinet. When Angela looked down again, the figure became clear.

It was a dead baby.

It was a human infant, and it was mummified. It's skin was dark and dry, although no one touched at that moment to determine whether or not it was fragile and paper-like or hardy and leather-ish.

"It's a dead baby," Angela said.

"A dead baby?" Joely asked.

"A dead baby," Gigi stated.

The three women stood still, surrounded by the fallen books, silenced by the scene in front of them. Each worked hard on the explanations they were about to share. They rushed to come up with something that made sense, that sounded like something their professor would have done, that fit the behavior of the woman who left three former students a storage unit where she kept a dead baby.

Working with Eddie

One of her single family houses needed a new countertop before she could rent it out again. The previous tenants had apparently set their hot pots directly on the counter, without putting down a towel or a pot holder. They didn't like to clean up grease, either. Scorch marks and burned indentions decorated the pale blue kitchen surfaces, and Ginger would have none of it. She liked to offer smooth surfaces to her incoming tenants. It seemed fitting, like a display of the service she provided as their landlord. Landlady.

"Domestic Dwelling Provider," Eddie once said.

Strong pipes, smooth kitchen surfaces and safe electrical currents. "If I advertised, I'd make that my tagline," she said to Eddie.

They lifted the countertop out of Eddie's truck bed and carried it quickly into the house. It was a quick job, and the sink fit without hassle. All the measurements lined up.

"Smooth like the new counter," Eddie said.

"Easy installation equals easy living," Ginger agreed.

Once the hard part was over, the pair started to clean other areas in the kitchen. The stove sat under a window, and oil had made its way onto the glass. Oil was splattered across the ceiling, too.

"I'll get the step ladder," Eddie said.

While Ginger scrubbed the windowsill, she thought about how little she knew about most of her renters. She knew a few from her bar tending days, which meant she really only knew their names, their best jokes, and their drink preferences. A few she knew by credit score. Some of them had better jobs than others. She remembered that one of her tenants was a doctor of some sort. And she knew that Daniel had a daughter who didn't talk much, but had a heck of a way with a hammer, a wrench and a paint roller.

She sighed. When she looked up, Eddie was standing on the ladder and scrubbing the ceiling. His arm reached over his head and lifted his shirt away from his waist. She reached out and slid her finger through a belt loop on his jeans. He stopped what he was doing, looked down into her eyes, and then lowered himself slowly from the ladder.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Do you want kids?" she said.

Eddie shut his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, she was still looking at him, waiting for an answer.

"I don't know. Do you?" He thought deflection might be his best bet. He didn't want to answer incorrectly, if there was an incorrect answer. He just wanted to finish up and go back to Ginger's place and kick back and watch television. Maybe he'd play a little guitar. Maybe he'd put in a light fixture.

She looked around the kitchen. "I've got these places," she said, as if it were the same thing.

Listening In

Ginger scooted the milk crate closer to the wall. She leaned in, pressing the water glass against her ear, which was still wet from the shower. When Eddie walked in, he took one look at her, wrapped in her bathrobe, wet hair clinging to her face, straddling a milk crate, and he hung his head. He walked over and took the glass from her grip. She smacked at his hand until she realized he was just turning it around and handing it back to her. She'd been holding the wrong end to her ear. Once she leaned back toward the wall, she could hear much better.

Eddie sat on the sofa and watched her listen hard. He studied the scene. She had a wild look in her eye he didn't see often. Her body was completely still, as if every cell in it were concentrating on the task at hand. He stood up to join her, but his small, quiet movement was too much distraction. She waved him away and back into his seat on the couch.

When Eddie walked up to the door, he saw that the lights were off in Daniel's apartment. He would swear that no one was home. But Ginger seemed convinced otherwise. He sat there, watching her react to whatever she was hearing through the water glass. Something was happening in the dining room next door.

She was essentially listening to a silent argument. Daniel and his daughter were trying to out quiet one another.

Ginger could feel the little girl's presence in the room, but she couldn't hear it. She was desperate to hear her voice. Once Ginger knew that the little girl was okay, she promised herself she'd put the glass down, go sit on Eddie's lap, and pretend it was a night like any other.

But Ginger also knew that the little girl didn't always speak, and if she did, it didn't mean she was alright. It just meant she felt like she had something to say.

She let the glass slip away from her ear and out of her hand. Eddie stood up as it shattered on the floor. He walked over and scooped her up in his arms. She let herself hang limp, arms dangling over her head and toward the floor. Eddie had to stop halfway down the hallway to readjust her body. She brought her arms up and put them around his neck. She looked him square in the eyes and said, "You can just take me."

Daniel Flips Out

Daniel stood on the front step, arms crossed, and stared at the empty driveway. When Ginger turned the corner and drove up the street, she could see him concentrating. It was almost as if he were trying to will her car into its usual parking spot.

He didn't seem to notice them approaching, but when she pulled in, his head snapped up and he suddenly realized that they were real. He made them appear. He manifested them. Ginger and the little girl opened their car doors, but before Ginger could come around to the step, Daniel grabbed his daughter by the arm and shook her enough to frighten Ginger.

"Where have you been?" he growled. The little girl went limp in his grip. All the personality that Ginger had encountered over the last few weeks disappeared, and she was the little girl with the blank face again. The one who didn't speak.

"Hey!" Ginger shouted and took a step forward. Daniel released the girl's arm, and she slid to the ground. She laid there in a pile. Ginger looked from one of them to the other.

"What the hell?" Ginger said.

"You can't just take her," Daniel said. He stepped toward Ginger with his index finger pointed at her face. "You can't just take her."

Ginger started to smack his hand out of her way when she noticed the little girl shake her head at her. Instead of start a fight, Ginger lowered her voice and said, "I'm sorry. I had an emergency and I didn't want her staying here alone."

Daniel lowered his finger. "You can't just take her," he said again. Then he said it one more time. "You can't just take her."

"I can't just take her," Ginger said. Daniel's face was blank for another second, and then he looked at his daughter lying still on the ground. He went over and sat beside her in the grass. He whispered something in her ear, but she didn't change her expression at all. She stared ahead, away from Ginger, away from the house. Ginger watched them sit on the ground in silence for a few minutes. Then she shook her keys and said, "Do you want a beer?"

Her tenants looked up at her but neither said anything. She unlocked her front door and stepped inside. She turned to look at them, but they were both staring off into the distance by then. She shut the door, turned on the lights, walked to the kitchen and reached for a longneck. She was tired, but she was also concerned. She went to look out her front window and saw that father and daughter were still in the same spot.

Ginger walked outside with her beer in her hand. She approached them carefully, slowly, but neither looked up at her again. She was standing over them before Daniel seemed to notice her. The little girl didn't bring her focus back to the immediate area. Her stare reached more than a thousand miles.

"Go inside before I call the cops about a couple of vagrants sleeping on my lawn," Ginger said.

Daniel stood up first. He reached down and scooped the little girl up. She was completely limp in his arms, her head dropped back dramatically, her hair practically brushing the ground as he carried her toward their apartment. Ginger turned to watch the little girl be carried away. The little girl's face was upside down, but Ginger thought she saw a tear run up the girl's forehead. It disappeared into the little girl's hairline. Ginger stepped forward and then stopped herself. She watched Daniel open the door, cross the threshold, close the door behind them. Ginger took a swig from her beverage and sighed.

"You can't just take her," Ginger said to the closed door. Then she sat down in the grass and finished her beer.

Apartment Maintenance

Ginger was waiting for a pizza to be delivered when she received a call from her tenant across town. She owned a four-unit in the neighborhood where she once tended bar. Most of the people to whom she rented apartments in that building were old regulars. She knew their criminal and credit histories without having them fill out the usual paperwork.

"Pipe burst in the basement," Ron, a one-time rabid whiskey drunk, said when she answered the phone. Most tenants called the service she hired to take such calls. The folks in that particular building called her directly to report problems. When they told her about the issue, it sounded like they were placing an order. They gave short, curt statements full of expectation. Because they expected swift service. The nature and location of their relationship had changed, but in a lot of ways, Ginger's role was exactly the same.

She looked at the little girl, who had already set the coffee table with paper plates and napkins. Eddie wasn't around, and if the pipe burst, she didn't want to wait until she found him to fix it. She considered, for a second, leaving the little girl alone in her apartment filled with power tools. Ginger sighed.

"Put your shoes back on," she said to the little girl. Ginger wrote a note on a napkin that said, "Leave it on the porch," and then taped the note to the door with a twenty dollar bill. "We've got to go take care of a place," she told the little girl.

They were quiet in the car. Ginger didn't like to take the freeway, so she drove surface streets to get across town. The little girl stared out the window and seemed to watch every turn that Ginger made. When they got to the building, the little girl reached into the backseat to grab Ginger's tool box. Ginger let her carry it through the building's front door. When they reached the door to the basement, she took it back.

"Stay right here until I make sure it's safe to come down the steps," she instructed. The little girl nodded.

Ginger was pretty sure that Daniel would be furious if he knew that she'd taken his daughter on an evening fix-it job. He had a real aversion to the possibility of his daughter leaving the duplex or learning a trade. If the little girl didn't love it so much, Ginger obviously wouldn't have kept showing her how to do things. But the little girl took to it the way Ginger took to it when she was growing up. And frankly, Ginger thought it was better to encourage her, to feed that hunger, rather than leave that curiosity wide open with no teacher in sight.

"Come on down," Ginger yelled up the stairs. The little girl stuck her head in the door first, then made her way down the open stairs. She stopped on the bottom step and looked at the floor.

"It's wet but not flooded," the little girl said.

"It's always a little wet," Ginger said. "I don't put a washer or dryer down here and no one has ever asked to use it for storage.

"Where do people do laundry?" the little girl asked.

"Down the street at the laundromat," Ginger answered.

The little girl stepped down and walked over to the tool box. She opened it up and dug around until she found the wrench. She held it up like an offering to Ginger.

"Because it's a pipe problem," the little girl said.

"Good call, kid," Ginger said. She was proud of her protege. She was going to smile at the little girl, but as she reached out her hand to take the wrench, she noticed her mouth had already made the decision. The corners were turned up. Her teeth were showing. She felt the weight of the tool in her grip and she stood there for a minute. Beaming.

Girl's Mother

The little girl was asleep on Ginger's sofa when Daniel came to pick her up. Ginger stepped out onto the porch and said, "Why don't we let her sleep a little bit longer?"

As a response, Daniel stared at his feet.

"Do you want a beer?" Ginger asked him.

He looked at her and a sincere wave of relief rolled over his face. He shook his head as if he were too exhausted to make his mouth form the word, "Yes."

When Ginger handed him the beverage, he hesitated at taking it from her. Then, once it was in his hand, he held it to his chest. Ginger twisted the top off from the bottle she brought outside for herself. She took a swig as she sized him up.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" she said.

He nodded. His gaze had fallen back to his feet.

"Where's her mother?"

He glanced up quickly and then focused his sight on the top of the bottle. He inhaled deeply, and with the exhale said, "Well...."

Daniel started to rub his hand across the back of his neck.

"She's gone," he finally said. Ginger had almost finished her drink by the time Daniel gave her that much of an answer. "She's gone," he repeated.

"Passed away?" Ginger asked. She knew she was prying, but something the little girl said earlier made her curious.

"No, no," Daniel said. "Just gone."

They sat in silence a while longer before Ginger said, "Well, thanks for clearing that up."

Daniel looked her in the eye and said, "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure," Ginger said.

"Where did you learn to do all this stuff?" Daniel waved his hand toward her door. Ginger was puzzled for a moment before she realized he meant the remodeling work.

"My folks," she said.

"Where are they?" Daniel asked.

"Gone," she said. "Just gone."

Remodeling Work

The little girl had quite an aptitude for painting the hard parts. She was good at cutting in, keeping paint away from woodwork and off the windowsill. Ginger showed her how to use painter's tape, but once left alone to do her work, the little girl didn't place one piece of it on the wall. Instead, she wrapped a single strip around each wrist, like tight bracelets, and another over her mouth. Ginger smiled when she saw it. She liked to stay silent when she worked, too.

Slowly, Ginger's side of the duplex was coming together. Eddie finally had all the electric working. The floor was no longer a splinter garden. Rooms were starting to take on identities. The kitchen was complete enough to have face plates on the electric outlets and even a few appliances plugged into them. The little girl helped apply the sticky tiles to the floor in the kitchen, and then Ginger had her painting the back wall, the big one, the one it would be hard to mess up. The little girl painted it, then she painted the space between the overhead cabinets and the countertop. She somehow pushed the refrigerator away from the wall just far enough that she could wedge herself in to paint that wall, too.

Left unsupervised, the little girl could get things done. Ginger admired her efforts, and gave her bigger jobs.

She was alone, painting in the living room, when her father stopped by.

"Are you getting paid for this?" Daniel asked his daughter. She sat on the floor with her back to him and the doorway in which he stood. She didn't answer him. She just kept painting.

"She's well compensated," Ginger said from the dining room.

"Well," Daniel said, "I hope so." He took one step forward to hand her his rent check.

"Thanks," Ginger said. "You want to come in? See what your daughter can do?"

He looked down at his daughter, who still ignored him. "Oh, I know what she can do," he said.

Ginger didn't love their dynamic. And, since the little girl spent more time at her house, she noticed Daniel's demeanor change, as well as his behavior toward both of them. He didn't like it. He didn't like something about their relationship. Yet, he didn't stop the little girl from spending time with Ginger. Instead, he glared at both girls. He gave short, rude answers to questions. And he snarled at any mention of his daughter's good work.

It made Ginger consider, briefly, adding a kindness clause to the lease.

Hospital Wives

In the waiting room, the wives sat with their backs to their husbands, who sat with their backs to the wives. Everyone stared ahead blankly. When Katherine arrived, she looked at both rows and said, "Hey!" and they seemed to snap awake. She held her palms up to ask, "Where is he?" Ellen started to stand up, but hesitated when the row of men rose in unison.

"He's in surgery," Joshua said.

"They say he'll be fine," Julian said.

Abraham stood with his arms hanging limp at his sides. He kept his eyes on the ground.

"I'm going to talk with the doctor," Katherine said and walked away, toward the nurses' station. She stood in front of the desk and stared at the tiny gray dots in the countertop. One of the nurses saw her and asked, "Can I help you?"

Katherine just looked up and said, "I needed to get away from my family."

She leaned against the desk and set her gaze in the direction of the waiting room. Ellen would be driving herself crazy with anxiety, trying to decide whether or not to join Katherine. Josie would be pretending to watch television while she watched Ellen out of the side of her eyes, ready to pounce with scorn if she left her place in the row. And Katherine had no idea what the men would be doing. She tried to imagine them talking with their wives or offering one another comfort. She couldn't see it. All she could see was the two strange lines they formed in an otherwise sterile environment.

Bedroom Renovation

When she walked into the room, she stepped on a pile of outlet covers and their loose, tiny screws. Eddie was on the floor, hunched over the small, square hole in the wall. Wires poked their wild yellow and red heads out. The room was losing light as the sun set. She crossed her arms and looked at Eddie. Here they were again. Out of electricity.

"It's been days," she said. It had been days. She woke up every morning and reached for the flashlight on her bedside table. She made her way to the kitchen, where Eddie set up a camp stove. Some mornings she fumbled her way through making coffee in a french press. Other mornings, she sat in the dark until and the light hit the windows and then she banged around the kitchen and slammed the cabinet doors until Eddie woke up.

"Getting a late start," he said as he came down the hall.

She glared at him. "I work for myself," she answered.

She lived in unfinished rooms without flinching. The possibility of a splinter sticking in her bare feet as she walked down her hallway didn't phase her a bit. Drywall and plaster and tools on the floor - she could handle it. But she needed to be able to see the mess in order to live with it. She had to confront it daily, and the darkness in the morning made her aware of it on another level. She knew it was there. She could feel it. She couldn't see it. And to fix it, she had to look at it.

Eddie sat on an empty milk crate. She kept a lot of those lying around. He reached for her cup of coffee, which she sat on the counter. She watched him lift it up and bring the mug to his lips. He sipped from it. He flinched at the bitterness of it. She drank it black when she made it at the house. Any other time, she'd have filled it with cream and sugar. But at her house, in the dark, without a refrigeration to keep the cream cold, she didn't bother.

"I'll have the bedroom done today," he said, and sat the mug right back where he found it.

She simply nodded. There was a time, in the beginning, when she directed his work. She would have told him that the kitchen was more important. She would have demanded faster progress. That time was long over. Instead, she nodded. She understood. He knew which room was the most important in the house.

Good Days

She didn't hate her husband. She couldn't place the feeling that came over her when he sat at the table and spent his day staring at one sheet from his legal pad. She thought about how she'd ended up in a cottage baking for bearded men who wrote poems, sometimes sewing with their wives - women who didn't seem to like one another much, but bound themselves together out of necessity. 

It was necessary because they needed the company. 

On the days they lost their partners to art, they could cling to one another. 

Katherine sighed. She looked out her front door. She leaned against the frame and looked past the tree that never once wore a swing, and beyond that to her patch of wildflowers. Roby dug the space for her on their two year anniversary. They brought rocks up from the creek to contain her space. They tilled the soil together. It wasn't a large plot. It wasn't a whole garden. It was a lovely gift from a husband who once upon a time encouraged her to love wild things.

Once they'd prepared the spot, he left her alone to toss handfuls of seeds onto the dirt. She didn't want a designed garden with perfectly aligned plants. She didn't want a designed life, either, she thought. And that's how she ended up in a cottage baking for bearded men who wrote poems. Her marriage was the result of tossing seeds at the dirt. Some stick and grow. Some don't make it. 

And some end up in a vase on a table under a window where she once fell in love with the light.

Renegade Wife

While Roby was on the road, Katherine met with the other wives to sit in a circle, sew and knit, and exchange polite conversation. They always met at Mellie's house, and her husband, Adam, was always home. He stayed in the attic, and Katherine had once joked that he was "the madman in the attic," locked away from polite company and the pleasantries they exchanged. Josie, the oldest of the wives, looked at Katherine over her reading glasses and said as slowly as she rocked in the chair, "Is that some college thing?" 

It wasn't a college thing, but because no one else seemed to think it was funny, Katherine just nodded and went back to binding the baby quilt she was making. She planned on giving it to the mother of her favorite student, who was having her third child. Her student, Sally, was very sweet and very excited to have a little sibling of her own. Her big sister was five years older, and always telling Sally that she had something that Sally didn't: a little sister. 

"Well, you have something she doesn't have," Katherine told her. "You have a big sister."

"I don't want something my sister doesn't have," Sally said. 

That was good enough for Katherine. 

Katherine didn't have brothers or sisters. Her parents were elderly and living in a facility of their choosing, with money they'd saved for just that occasion. She supposed she should be grateful. She wasn't expected to care for them or pay for their care. She wasn't expected to be their sole means of entertainment. They were content with the weekly call she made to check on them, which they always showed up for, even though sometimes they seemed distracted and often had board games or card tournaments needed to rush off to.

She looked around the room at the women, the wives. She wondered about their ambitions. She wondered how often their husbands read their work to these wives. She wanted to ask questions. She inhaled, about to ask Ellen about the gift baskets she made for baby showers, but before she could speak, Josie said, "Ellen, I hear Horner's is stocking fine teas now."

Horner's was the local department store. They'd asked Ellen to create baskets for them numerous times. Every time, she said, "I'm flattered, of course. But I just wouldn't have the time." 

"I heard that, too," Ellen said. 

"We should have a tea party," Katherine suggested. 

Ellen looked at Josie, although Katherine could see the light in her eyes. Josie squinted at Katherine, who then said, "Maybe one night while the men make their poems." 

To Husband's Home

Roby brought her to live in a country cottage he inherited from his grandmother. The small house was painted a pale yellow and stood alone on two acres several miles from the nearest town. Katherine imagined hanging the laundry out to dry on a line she'd run from the house to a tree in the front yard. Roby had told her about the tree. He promised to hang a tire swing for her so she could hover a while.

When Katherine first laid her eyes on the house, she thought it was romantic and immediately fell in love with the light that came through the kitchen window. "We need a table right there," she said and pointed to the spot that would become Roby's writing place. At the time, though, Katherine imagined coffee dates with her handsome husband. She imagined passing him the newspaper and buttering toast at the table. She hoped he'd read to her while she sat and embroidered pillow cases - a skill she learned from her own grandmother who wasn't fortunate enough to see her only granddaughter grow up and marry a man who knew how to hang a swing and tend a beard.

She leaned against the kitchen sink and looked out the window she'd loved the first time she saw it. She could see the tree clearly. No clothesline was ever connected. She dried laundry on racks in the basement. No swing was ever hung. She didn't hover, or drift, or give her mind any time to roam on its own. She quit daydreaming. She started baking.

The Vacuum

Usually, the back and forth motion soothed her. Jeannie pushed the vacuum cleaner forward and pulled it back to her and she pretended it was rowing practice for a minute. She wouldn't allow herself to get lost in a fantasy. She tried to stay present while she cleaned, especially the floors. She liked tending to the ground she stood on. She swept the floors and vacuumed the carpets and pressed her bare feet onto the wood and then the rug and thought about how much she enjoyed caring for a space she inhabited.

She saw Roby sit at the table and start scratching away, taking notes, making things. She looked down at her feet on her floor and flinched. Both actions, writing and sweeping, were repetitive and never produced perfect results. She looked up at the ceiling and saw that she was way behind on knocking the spider webs from the corners. She didn't enjoy that task as much. Maybe it was the guilt she felt over destroying a spider's masterpiece, their home, and their massacre spot.

Jeannie never once wiped the table. She only cleaned the tablecloth if Roby remembered to put it in the hamper. She tried to think of the last time she sat down there. The idea of sitting at the table felt as foreign to her as the possibility of spending time in a spider's web. She'd get stuck. She'd be among killers who made intricate things.

First Encounter with Little Girl

It had been two days since Ginger put the sign in the window and she was doing nothing but fielding calls from people who asked, "How much?" The deciding factor was never beautiful cabinetry or the view from the kitchen window. When it came down to it, people cared most about the price. It was no surprise. She just tired from saying the same thing over and over.

On Wednesdays, she drove around and took a look at the other properties she owned. She checked in on her tenants, and took notes on any concerns they had. If something needed fixed, she nodded and wrote it down in a steno pad. She could have dropped her pen and fixed a lot of problems on the spot, but she found that her tenants didn't trust her handiwork. She hired a guy to show up and do the work. It cost her money she could have saved if she'd done it herself, but she found that tenants stayed longer and didn't call her as much if a man took care of the maintenance.

When she fixed a leaky faucet or changed out a hot water heater, sometimes tenants kept calling, certain they heard dripping, convinced their water wouldn't heat up - even though a ten second test proved otherwise. She shrugged it off and hired a handyman. She still inspected any job first, though.

She was on her way back from a property when she saw a little girl at the bottom of the hill. She was alone on the sidewalk in front of a house that rented for two times what Ginger charged for her duplex apartment. As Ginger drove closer, the little girl's face seemed angrier. Just as Ginger was about to turn up her street, the little girl pushed her middle finger as high up in the air as she could - thrusting it in Ginger's direction. The little girl seemed to be straining herself. Ginger's eyes widened, and then she shook her head to herself. "I know," she said aloud in her car. She knew that feeling. She understood what it was like to want the world, or anyone, even a random stranger driving by in a car, to just go to hell.