The Fourteen Day Soul Detox, Volume Two (13 page)

“That’s my boy.”
Susan gave him a kiss on the head.

“Sarah knows she’s not
supposed to do gymnastics at school,” I said, looking over at
Sarah.

She groaned with her mouth still full
of food.

I held up my hands in surrender. “It’s
important.”

She made groaned again and glared at
me.

“Okay, okay,” I said,
half-laughing.

“You ladies hungry? I’ll
start on some dinner,” Susan said, making to stand.

“Want me to help?” I asked
her.

“How about, I cook, you clean,”
Susan said.

“Jamie doesn’t need to
clean,” Beza said, “You cook, I’ll clean.”

“No Beza, let me do it this once,
please?” I said.

She grinned. “Okay, if you
really, really want to.”

When the kids finished their macaroni,
they jumped up and ran outside. I watched through the open door as
Sarah climbed up into the giant trampoline and Aiden followed her.

“Did they go on the trampoline?”
Beza asked, craning her neck.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Okay,” Beza said, sighing
and getting up from the table to follow them out. “You need to
take turns flipping okay? I don’t want any more collisions.
Whoever’s turn it is, the other one stands on the side,”
Beza called out.

“We know Mom!” Aiden yelled
at her.

“Don’t yell at me, Aiden,
or it’s going to be a time out,” she said.

Aiden huffed and muttered something
under his breath, but followed Beza’s directions.

“He’s always angry at me
lately, and it’s only me, he never even talks back to Susan,”
Beza frowned as we sat together at the outside table.

“I feel you, Sarah’s always
mad at me lately, too. It’s like I’m constantly annoying
her.

“Aside from that, how you
feeling? We haven’t really talked in a while.”

“Oh, I’m good. Things are
going pretty well at work lately. I haven’t been working much
with Karen Blanche lately, and that’s always really nice,”
she gave me an amused smile.

“Ha. You know that woman from the
barbeque last weekend? She’s friends with your boss.”

Beza laughed. “Yeah, Carrie
Kelly, I actually know her. She didn’t even recognize me
though, and I didn’t correct her. I’ve worked with her
company for eleven weddings, they’re ridiculously overpriced
and so snobby—but Karen Blanche insists on using them. I’m
not a fan of Carrie.”

“Really? She seemed so nice,”
I said.

“Well, I don’t really know
her that well, just in a work relationship. She’s probably very
different socially.”

“That’s so weird, I didn’t
know you knew how to dislike people,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Well, I
usually don’t. Except of course for Karen, but there are some
people I’d rather not spend my time around.”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

My phone beeped with a text and I
checked the screen. “Speak of the devil,” I said,
grinning.

“Carrie?” Beza asked.

“No, sorry, Patrick, I guess we
weren’t actually talking about him.”

“But you were thinking about
him?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said
as I read the message.

Patrick:
Are
we still on for dinner tomorrow night?

Me:
I’m
not sure if the food they serve there really qualifies as ‘dinner’,
but I’m definitely up for whooping your ass at arcade games.

Patrick:
That
will never happen, I am an arcade master.

Me:
I
have a second degree black belt in arcade games, so we shall see.

Patrick:
Want
to meet there at six-thirty?

Me:
We’ll
be there.

I stowed my phone and looked up into
Beza’s grinning face.

“So… How’s
everything going with you?” she asked.

“Fine. I don’t know—I
might be selling my coffee shop tomorrow.”

“That’s really big,”
she said.

“It feels really big. I’d
be selling it to another coffee shop chain and they want to buy
everything, the machines, the displays, furniture, even the signs and
stuff so the shop will kind of still be there. I’m sure they’ll
change the appearance somewhat, since they’re a chain and they
all look pretty alike, but I’ll be able to go back and visit.”

“I remember the opening day.
Chris was so young then, how old was he?”

“Sixteen. You know, we weren’t
even planning on hiring anyone. Logan and I were planning on working
the whole store alone. And then, before we opened, Chris walked by
with a group of friends after school and struck up a conversation
with us while we were painting the outside. We showed them the store,
because they were curious and Chris got so excited when we showed him
the full baking setup in the back. He’d asked us for a job and
we told him we didn’t even have the money to pay ourselves at
that point. Then Chris said that if he came back before we left for
the night with the best thing we’d ever tasted, we had to give
him a job. He came back an hour later with éclairs, and we
gave him the job. We actually took out an additional loan just to do
it, best business decision we ever made.”

“Did he work mornings in high
school?”

“Yeah, we were so worried about
it too. He worked from five am to seven am every morning and early
shifts on Saturday mornings too. He still earned a really high grade
point average and it was what he wanted to do. No one could talk him
out of it. He never quit either,” I said.

“Would he lose his job if you
accept the offer?” she asked.

“Basically, yeah. The offer says
that they want to retain the equipment, staff and general goodwill of
the customer base, so I’m assuming they’ll offer him a
job. But I looked into it and the company only pay their baristas
minimum and they have an affiliated company that provides their
pastries. I seriously doubt Chris could live off minimum wage. I know
his parents paid for his college but I’m pretty sure he’s
on the hook if he wants to go for his MBA, which I know he does.”

“He would get another job in a
heartbeat,” Beza said.

“Yeah, I know that and he does
too.” A tear dropped down my cheek. “It’s just the
end of an era, I guess. Chris and I have been through a lot together,
and it’s going to be hard not seeing him every day. I’m
going to miss him the most, but, I’ll miss the shop too. It has
so many memories.”

Beza’s hand rubbed my back.

“Thanks,” I told her.

“Dinner ladies,” Susan
said, stepping outside. “What did I miss?” She looked
between Beza and me.

“Just feeling a bit sad about
selling the shop,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m feeling a little
sad about it too,” Susan said. “Remember when Logan
hosted that brownie eating extravaganza for charity with all those
bands?”

“Yeah, we got in trouble for that
one, the fire department was called and we had to kick everyone out.”

“I have never eaten so many
brownies in my life. I couldn’t eat another one for a year,”
she said.

“Umm, brownie,” Susan said.

We walked into the house, eating
Susan’s food and telling stories about the Coffee Spot.

Day
Four

Good
in Bed

I was sitting in my living room of my
old house, staring out the window at the streetlights on our old
street. I touched my bright green couch, which should have been a
darker shade in the low light.

“This is a dream, I’m
dreaming,” I said to the empty room.

A knock came at my door, and I stood
slowly. When the knock came again, I rushed to open the door.
Glancing through the peephole, I inhaled my breath sharply. My hands
shook as I opened the door.

Standing framed in my doorway was a
middle aged woman police officer.

“My daughter is sleeping,”
I whispered to the cop.

“Are you Mrs. Scott?” the
officer asked me in a low voice.

“This isn’t how this
happened,” I told her. “Cameron comes first. Cameron
comes to the house first, then you come.” But when I looked
back to the door, the police officer was gone and it was Cameron
there.

He said nothing, just stood there in
the doorway, my porch light casting deep shadows on his face.

“Hey Cameron, what are you doing
here? Is everything okay?” I whispered.

He said nothing in return, his face
ashen and eyes fixed at my feet.

“Do you want to come in?”

After another minute of silence, I
said, louder, “Talk to me. You’re scaring me. What
happened?”

“Vanessa just called me from the
hospital, but I didn’t go to the hospital—I came here.”
His voice was so quiet and hard to hear because he talked to my feet,
not me.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“She’s fine.”

I startled awake from the dream, tears
coursing down my face. “Shit,” I whispered, wiping my
nose on my sleeve.

There was a small groan beside me and I
saw that Sarah must have left Aiden’s pullout bed and crawled
in with me. She lay curled up into a fetal position on top of the
covers.

I wrapped the blankets back around her,
careful not to jostle her too much before crawling out of bed.

Checking my phone, I saw that I still
had another hour until I was supposed to wake up. Finding my purse on
the side of my bed, I extricated the folded up list from my wallet
and read today’s task: Sleep.

“Of course it is,” I
whispered, rubbing my hands over my face. Climbing out of bed, I
walked to the adjoining bathroom. I pulled the garment bag off where
it was hanging on the door and took it with me. When the bathroom
door was closed, I turned the light on and hung the hanger on the
shower curtain pole.

After unzipping the bag, I examined the
three-piece suit.

“It’s a skirt suit,”
I said, examining the bottom half. I zipped up the bag again, hanging
it back on the door. I searched the drawers of the bathroom one by
one until I finally found a razor. Sitting on the side of the tub, I
shaved my legs using the bath faucet to wash off the soap and razor.
When I was finished, I tried on the suit. I buttoned the navy blazer,
examined myself thoroughly, then unbuttoned it.

“Jamie?” I heard Susan say.
There was a knock on the door, and a moment later Sarah’s loud
crying.

I opened the bathroom door to find
Susan standing, droopy eyed, holding onto a bawling Sarah.

“Oh, no,” I said, leaning
down to scoop Sarah up.

“She came into our room and
started crying. I think she couldn’t find you or something,”
Susan said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry baby, I
was just in the bathroom,” I said, moving her side to side
while she cried out loud, ragged sobs. “I’m sorry,
Susan,” I said.

“It’s fine, it’s
about time for us to get up anyway,” she said.

I walked over to the bed and set Sarah
down. Gently I moved the wet strands of hair out of her face. “I’m
so sorry, angel, were you scared?”

Sarah made a loud sound and made to hit
me, but I caught her hand. “No, baby, no hitting. Do you want a
squeeze?”

“No!” she shouted, crying
harder and now kicking and screaming.

“Is she having a meltdown?”
I heard Aiden say from behind me.

I spun to see Aiden standing in the
doorway.

“Yeah, sweetheart, she just needs
a moment to reset,” I told him as I walked over to give him a
kiss on the top of his head.

“Can I help? Sometimes Sarah
listens to me but not to anyone else,” he said.

“Not this time sweetheart. Could
you give us just a minute?”

“Sure, aunt Jamie.”

I went and lay down beside Sarah, not
touching her but making soothing sounds. “It’s okay, it’s
going to be okay,” I said. “I screwed up, I super screwed
up. I shouldn’t have closed the door to the bathroom. Let’s
just calm down, and take gymnast breaths.”

Sarah’s sobs and kicking subsided
quickly and she crawled into my lap.

“You want a squeeze?” I
asked her.

“Squeeze harder,” she said
and she grabbed one of my wrists and pulled it toward her.

I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing
her to me as tightly as possible. “Are you ready for gymnast
breaths?” I asked. We took ten breaths together, and then
started on another set of ten when I heard a light knock on the door.

“Come in,” I said.

“Hey guys,” Beza said,
stepping inside. She held up another garment bag. “I was
thinking you might need another suit, Jamie.”

I looked down to see the one I was
wearing was wrinkled and had a substance that looked suspiciously
like snot on it. “I am so sorry!” I told her.

She made a ‘pisha’ sound.
“I never wear that one anyway and the drycleaners will clean
it.”

“I’ll pay for the dry
cleaning,” I said.

“I get a better deal when I do
them in bulk; it’s not a problem at all. I’m going to
hang this one on the door.”

After starting a shower for Sarah and
encouraging her into it, I unzipped the new garment bag. Seeing that
this one was a pantsuit, I sighed and shook my head. Carefully, I
took the snot-covered suit off and hung it back up before putting the
clean charcoal gray pantsuit on. After a few minutes, Sarah started
singing in the shower.

I examined the high-heeled stilettos
that were sitting next to where the garment bag had been. Then I
looked over my shoulder to where my flats sat next to the guest bed.

“Definitely flats,” I said
to myself, and walked over to slip them on.

When I heard the shower turn off, I
called over my shoulder, “Sarah, there’s a towel hanging
beside you and pile of clothes on the toilet for you to put on.”

After a minute of silence, I said,
“Your toothbrush and toothpaste are by the sink.” I sat
on the bed.

Susan stuck her head in the room. “Hey
Jamie, what do you two want for breakfast?”