Steady (10 page)

“Don’t know. I guess Katrina was supposed to help with that, but since she’s said no, I don’t know what happens. Can you imagine someone turning down working with me?” he asked playfully.

“There’s the Will I know and love. You had me worried there for a second, acting the concerned one.”

He laughed. “Where’s that husband of yours? You’re terrible for my ego,” he said, changing the subject.

“He’s in the backyard. He could use some help, and I need to pick up a kid from softball practice,” she said, getting up from the table to give him a kiss on his cheek. She had to tiptoe to do it, but it worked. She’d done that to him and his two other sisters forever, taking care of them while their mother and grandfather worked. She had been a good mom then, too, Will thought.

He threw his soda can in the recycle bin and headed out the back door in search of his brother-in-law, Dennis Sr. His favorite part of his sister’s home was their backyard. It was designed with children in mind. The deck ran the full length of the back of their home. On the deck were tables, the biggest one designed to seat about twelve. He’d attended many birthday parties and other holiday celebrations out here. There were two couches with end tables and ottoman, a comfy living space outside, shaded by a large canopy extending from the roof of the house. Two steps below the deck stood the pool, the old-fashioned rectangular kind, volleyball net across the middle of it. The rest of the yard consisted of flower beds, with a playscape area for the kids. Oh, to be a child of parents with money.

Dennis was digging up one of the flower beds. Will started over toward him.

“What are you working on now?” he asked.

Dennis turned at the sound of his voice. “Your sister wants to plant something here. I just provide the brawn and she provides the brains,” he said, stopping and watching Will as he walked over to him. “Good to see you. Did you see your sister?”

“Yes, she went to pick up Monica from softball practice,” Will said, looking around at the tools spread out before him on the ground. “Let me help,” he said, picking up a shovel.

“I’m never, ever going to turn down help,” Dennis replied.

Will and Dennis talked and worked, more like Dennis listening while Will talked about the contest and Katrina, about being maybe just a little, more than a little, interested in her. He liked her body for sure, and had been involved in a little internal struggle over wanting to sleep with her. His body was still complaining about the loss. He talked about the temper she’d shown earlier, making her even more interesting, and that he felt bad for her. He’d lost his dad when was very young, too.

They cleaned out the two main beds per Jennifer’s request, and, since Will was here and in a working mood, Dennis used him. After the beds were done, he and Will added compost to the remaining ones. Dennis inwardly thanked this Katrina person who’d given Will this burst of energy; they’d completed his list of ‘honey-dos’. Jennifer would be pleased. Dennis preferred her pleased.

It was starting to get dark when Dennis and Will called it quits. Will helped gather up the tools and put them back in the garage.

“Come over anytime; there is always something here that needs doing,” Jennifer said, walking out to meet them. Will smiled.

“Dinner’s ready. You’re welcome to stay,” Jennifer said.

“No, I’d better get home, but thanks for the offer,” he said. “Tell your son I’ll kill him in the video games the next time I stop by.”

“Thanks for the help,” Dennis said again, walking over to stand next to his wife, putting his arm around her waist.

“Sure, no problem.” Will walked toward his jeep, hopped in, and pulled out, waving a final time at his sister and brother-in-law, pushing Katrina and the earlier conflict to the back of his mind. Hopefully, it would work itself out.

***

After Katrina left the meeting, she spent the day holed up in her home, licking her wounds, feeling sorry for herself. She replayed her argument with Will; well,
she’d
argued. He, to his credit, hadn’t taken her bait. She felt a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t his fault he was selected. He must think her a loony tune. One minute she was practically begging him for sex and the next she was angry over a gardening competition, of all things.

Seems Sandy and Mrs. Washington had known he’d been selected. That’s what those glances between them were about the other day when she showed them her designs. Shouldn’t they have told her? She acknowledged to herself that it probably wouldn’t have made a bit of difference, anyway; she was hell-bent on being the lead. Always.

Their rejection still hurt. There was no way she’d work with Will. He could figure it out for himself, just as she had. One part of her thought that, anyway; the other part was crying over not being able to spend time around him. All that potential time, poured down the drain. It was still pleading its case for her to work with him; maybe her wish to touch his body again would come true.
Please, please, please let it come true.

Let the precious committee help him if he needed it. She couldn’t believe he called her a gardening snob. Still, she felt a little twinge of guilt that perhaps not helping him wasn’t the right course of action, that she should just get over herself and help, that somehow her parents would have been disappointed in her today. Since when did this competition start being about her, anyway? She ignored that line of thought, choosing to feel sorry for herself instead.

She’d worked hard for this neighborhood, and it was apparently not enough. Was she ever enough? Could she ever have life work for her benefit, and longer than the eleven years she’d been lucky to have her parents before their death? She’d never met her birth parents; she had been an orphan for as far back as she could remember.

The bright spot in her life had started with her adoption at age ten. She stood up from her couch, tired of her thoughts, kicked off her flip-flops, removed her hair from its pony tail, and pulled her shirt over her head, leaving her in a sports bra and sweat bottoms. She walked over to the counter and poured herself a glass of water, taking it with her to look out the windows over her garden, which was illuminated by solar-powered lighting.

She loved working in her garden and the neighborhood gardens; well, any garden for that matter. It was one of her fondest memories of time spent with her adoptive parents. They’d plunged her knee-deep in dirt as soon as she came to live with them. She, who had given up hope of having a mother or father, took to dirt like a duck to water.

Her parents were an older couple, in their early fifties, when they’d seen Katrina on a TV show—some station asking people to adopt foster kids. Because they’d hadn’t had any of their own, they’d picked her, ten-year-old, rag-tag Katrina of the big nerdy glasses, thick unruly hair, and chip the size of Texas on her shoulder, and they tried to make up for her years without parents.

They taught her everything they knew about gardening, and, like a flower, her heart had opened and blossomed. At their death, an accident that she didn’t like to think about, she’d taken the proceeds left to her from their life insurance, retirement, and savings and used a large portion of it as a down payment on her home in their old neighborhood. She’d sold the original home, couldn’t bear living in it without them; it was too big, anyway. She had a smaller home built for her. The rest of the money she’d put away, learning to live on just her salary. She knew the value of money, having gone without it most of her life.

She missed her parents and the unconditional love they’d shown her, loved that they’d been able to see the scared, lonely little girl underneath her barbed walls and thorny defenses. She loved her parents tremendously and missed them fiercely, and learned early that life was tenuous and filled with risk. One had to be careful.

Monday morning at work, Katrina washed her hands and went in search of her favorite mug, the one she regularly used to make tea. She and Amber were taking a morning break. Katrina added hot water from the dispenser and a tea bag, orange spice. She purchased a package monthly and hid them in the back of the cabinet behind the paper towels. She added two packets of sweeteners and joined Amber at the table.

“So what’s the latest on your neighborhood’s competition? Looking to win again?” she asked. Katrina brought her up to date on the committee’s selection of Will.

“What are you going to do?” Amber asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I tell you what I’d do if I had half your talent. I’d quit this job, one that you only endure, and start my own landscaping business. How many times have I told you that you should turn your passion for gardening into a business? I don’t know anyone who loves it as much as you do.”

“Don’t start with that again,” she said, giving Amber the evil eye. “Did you know that 95 percent of small businesses fail within the first five years? People mistake a hobby for a business. Just because you love to cook doesn’t make you a restaurant owner,” she said.

“Oh, Katrina, you make my head hurt sometimes,” Amber said, putting her fingers against her temples and rubbing them. “I know you love what you do with flowers and gardening. I know you do. And you already have an in with your godfathers; they would help you. I bet they would provide funding if you were to ask.”

“They have done enough for me.”

“Fine, but you should give some serious thought to doing your own thing. And speaking of doing your own thing, Claudia and I are having some folks over. You remember I told you that we’d hooked up with an entrepreneurship group we found through the chamber of commerce? Every member has to host a party, and it’s our turn this month. You have to come.”

“Why do I have to come?” Katrina asked.

“Just come, see if you’re interested. You may catch a good vibe and decide to quit this job the next day and start your own business.”

Katrina blew out a breath. “I doubt that. This isn’t you and Claudia’s attempt to set me up again, is it?” she said, squinting at Amber, not putting anything past them.

“Will you come?” Amber said, smiling but not answering the question, a detail not lost on Katrina.

“When is it?”

“A week from Sunday
,
7 p.m., and once you commit you can’t back out, either. I know you.”

“Okay, I’ll come, but you had better not have an ulterior motive.”

“Who, me?” Amber said, smiling. “I’d better get back to my desk. I’m behind schedule.”

Katrina raised her eyebrows.

“I know, right. I’m never behind. But don’t worry, it won’t be for long,” she said, walking out the door.

What Katrina hadn’t shared with Amber was that she had given serious thought to starting her own business, doing her own thing, had even considered switching her major to agricultural economics, especially after she’d started in the master gardener’s training program. It was so much fun, didn’t seem like work, really. Practicality won out; she’d decided to stick with her business degree instead, her parents’ recommendation. After their deaths, she’d felt like she should honor their wishes. They’d taken a big risk on her.

Amber was into baking—pies, cakes, any type of dessert. And she was also big into entrepreneurship; hence her desire to push Katrina. She’d launched her own website a few months ago and had successfully begun taking orders. She joined this network of other small-business owners in the city, and was always after Katrina to make her hobby work for her. But Amber had financial support from Claudia, her Mommy Warbucks. Katrina just had Katrina.

And anyway, what was wrong with having a job you could tolerate, okay, endure, and a hobby that you loved?

***

“What a mess,” she thought, looking inside the pantry at Charles and Colburn’s home. She was here to cook dinner for them. She stopped by the grocery after work, picking up a few things. She’d known not to expect much from their refrigerator. With Charles at least, there was an outside chance that he might have cooked something healthy. Not so with Colburn; he could eat off of that little truck that came around selling tacos every day and not miss a beat.

“What are you cooking?” Colburn asked, peering over her shoulder at the chicken breasts that lay on the counter. “You’re going to fry those up, Katrina girl?” he asked.

“No, I’m putting them on the grill.”

“Grill, huh?” he said, giving her a noncommittal response. “I can’t remember the last time I had some good old-fashioned fried chicken,” he said, going for the pitiful look.

Katrina rolled her eyes and opened the refrigerator door, pointing to the bucket of KFC on the top shelf. “It must have been this week. Not so long ago, it appears,” she said, closing the door.

Colburn smiled. “Can’t get anything past you, Katrina girl,” he said, walking away.

“You really need to watch your diet, Colburn. Did you know that a heart attack occurs about every twenty seconds with a heart attack death about every minute?”

“Don’t start. I’ve got one more job to do. How long before dinner?” he asked.

“Give me thirty,” she said.

She was in the process of slicing vegetables when Charles walked in. “Thanks for dinner,” he said, taking a seat at the table to watch her, stretching out his long legs.