Lola pulled up to her driveway in Gloria’s car, and took a mental note to ask her mom how her insurance paperwork was going. She had been avoiding it, really anything that had Kyle’s name on it, but it was time she had a car of her own again.
She only had to wait a few minutes before Mark pulled in behind her. His eyes looked heavy with bags underneath. His hair was unkempt, and a bit of stubble played on his chin.
“Hi there,” Lola said brightly.
“Hey,” he said with only a hint of a smile touching his lips.
Lola narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you okay?” she asked. “It doesn’t look like you’ve slept a wink.”
“I didn’t,” he said shortly. “I can only stay a minute, so we should get inside.” He brushed past her and headed to the front door, arms crossed, waiting for her to unlock it.
Lola felt him bristle past her as she let him in first, then shut the door behind them.
“So? What was your idea?” she asked, staring at the back of him.
“Where do you keep the dried herbs?” he asked, barely turning in her direction.
“In the spice cabinet, like any normal person,” she answered sarcastically. “What is going on with you?”
“Is that where you kept the tea too?,” he said ignoring her question.
She took a deep breath. “Why do you need it? Is that where the next clue is?”
He nodded. She followed him into the kitchen.
“It’s over there in the corner cabinet.” she said. “No, the other one.” She pointed in the opposite direction, with his back turned to her, it did little good.
Mark rifled through the spice jars, clanking them against each other until he reached the very back corner on the top shelf. He stopped and turned around holding a tin full of Irish tea, then opened the lid, reached inside and pulled out a small key
“Ah!” Lola squealed running to his side. “You found it!” she wrapped his arms around his waist, but he gently broke her grasp. “How did you know? How would you have even thought?” She shook her head in disbelief.
“Do you remember the Irish blessing Kyle’s family always says?”
She nodded. Of course she remembered. He had repeated it to her so often. Anytime she felt out of sorts, he would scoop her up onto his lap and whisper it into her ear.
“May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you, and all your heart may desire.” Lola recited. “Tea” she said more to herself. “That’s how you knew.”
Mark handed her the tiny key.
“Listen,” Mark started, “I need to get out of here. Keep the key safe, and head that way as soon as you can.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” she asked, confused.
“Not this time.” He turned abruptly and headed for the door, but Lola stopped him, grabbing his elbow and spinning him towards her.
“Look at me,” she said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Mark jerked his arm away, ripping her finger tips from his cotton sleeve.
“Please,” she whispered. “If you don’t, you’ve left me all over again, and I just can’t…” She realized then how thin the thread was that was holding her together.
He took a deep breath, steadied his feet, then studied her eyes as a look of resolution formed on his face.
“Alright, Lola,” he said quietly. “You deserve to know more,“ he pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted his eyes. “But we can’t do it here.” He looked around the room. “Did you drive Gloria’s car this morning?”
She nodded.
He leaned in closely, the tip of his nose grazing her temple. She found it difficult to focus for a moment.
“Ok, this is what we’re going to do,” he whispered. “Nod twice when I‘m done speaking, but don‘t say anything” he said. “Put down your phone on the counter, and go to the bathroom. I’ll head out first to the car, then when you’re done, follow me out and close the house up behind you.”
Lola nodded obediently then took her phone out of her pocket, and walked through the house. Her heartbeat was beginning to race.
She stood at the vanity gripping the wood sides, willing her heart to slow. After a few moments she left, and walked through the front door where she found Mark waiting, as he said he would, in the passenger seat of her mom’s car.
She opened the driver’s side and sat down next to him, expectantly.
“Now, before we start, you need to know that I was sworn to never share this with you,” he took another deep breath. “Things have…changed…it would seem. New developments.” he shook his head. “That’s not really the point though. The bottom line is, you aren’t going to like what I have to say. You might even hate me for it, but I don’t see a way around it anymore. Do you remember when I met you six years ago? At the bookstore you worked for?” he asked.
“Of course I do, Second Reading, it was my favorite,” she answered.
“Well, what if I told you I had been sent there to meet you. That I hadn’t actually been looking for that first edition, that I didn’t even know who that author was until ten minutes before I walked into that shop?”
Lola couldn’t process this. She stared ahead of her at the garage door, specifically the chipped green paint in the top right corner.
Mark waited for a response, then continued.
“It was June, I remember because it was so hot already and Kyle and I had been in the van for three hours that evening waiting for the moment we were supposed to go inside. But we couldn’t run the air because we were almost out of gas. Kyle had spent the gas money on cigarettes, and he was lucky I was in a decent mood that day.”
Hearing Kyle’s name had brought the moment into perspective. She remembered that day, the day they had walked into the shop. She had been wearing her favorite summer dress. It was purple with delicate straps that flowed down past her waist to her knees.
“The moment finally came when you flipped around the closed sign. Our job was to go inside and meet you, find out if you knew anything.”
She smiled slightly at the memory of them running up, so afraid they had missed their opportunity to buy that book. Then how disappointed they were when they found out they didn’t even carry first editions. It was only a small town used bookstore she had tried to explain to them.
That’s when Mark had asked for her phone number, it was the least she could do he had said with a grin. Kyle had stood back smiling at his friend’s lame attempts. It hadn’t worked either.
“Well, even if you had it, we were too broke to buy it, so it really worked out. But we were still surveying the store. So, we came back later that night to watch who came out. We knew your boss was hosting meetings that he had no business being a part of.”
Lola nodded, she also remembered the strange meetings, the owner Tim had called poker night. She had accidentally walked in one evening when his wife had called the shop looking for him. Tim had jumped up knocking the poker table over, shooing her out with a red face full of panic. She had never understood why no one had been holding cards and the table had been empty.
“We got the photos we needed, but we were still so far away from any real evidence. That’s when we knew we really had to get to know you.”
Lola had a sharp intake of breath.
“So, naturally we came back for a follow up visit. We came, drank bad coffee, looked at books and pretended to know what we were talking about. I think it was pretty lucky you were still so young. We were terrible at our job,” he snickered.
Lola turned to glare at him.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately then began again before she could interrupt. “After days of coming in, you finally agreed to have dinner with me. I was on cloud nine. I took you to that little pizza place, remember when I spilled the garlic sauce all over you? You said you were going to have to take a long bath to get that smell off. ” he smiled to himself. “Despite what I was there for, you were the most beautiful girl I had ever had the pleasure of taking out.”
Lola rolled her eyes.
“It’s the truth,” he shrugged. “Well, I found out pretty quickly you didn’t actually know anything. The people above me were convinced as well, and you were dropped as a potential witness. But I wasn’t done seeing you yet. So, I decided to let it play out a little more. It worked out pretty well for awhile, until you got an eye for Kyle.”
Thank you so much for sharing this with me! For more info about freewrites, visit @mariannewest!
If you would like to check out the story from the beginning you can find the previous chapters here!
1 |2|3|4|5
|6| 7 |8|9| 10| 11 | 12|13
To the amazing people that read this story! Thank you!
@cecicastor, @scribblingramma, @enginewitty, @janaveda, and @sirmartinet
Much love,
Stacie D
This is an example of why I can read a book I read 40 years ago and not remember any of it. You wrote this maybe two years ago, right? And I've already forgotten lots of the details! So glad you are working on it again!
Haha you aren't alone! I had forgotten so much as well! I'm glad it's back too 😀