Page 69 of The Newcomer
“Wow. Twelve hundred dollars?”
“And that’s wholesale. And it doesn’t include cushions,” Ava said.
Letty was reading the product description. “Plus, the delivery time is at least six weeks. We’ll have a mutiny on our hands if we don’t have lounge chairs for the pool. Couldn’t we just buy something locally?”
“There’s that factory-outlet patio place up on US 19 in Clearwater,” Ava said. “I’ve never been in there.…”
“I see their television commercials all the time,” Letty said. “Maybe we should check it out.”
“Agreed. And I’m putting you in charge of this little project,” Ava said. “You could run up there now. If you see something that will work, go ahead and buy it.”
“Really? You trust me to make a big decision like that? We need what? At least a dozen chairs?”
“Make it sixteen,” Ava said. “I’m tired of listening to guests bickering over who gets the ‘good’ chairs. Price out some drinks tables to go between the loungers while you’re there. You can take pictures of what you’ve chosen and text me. Okay?”
Letty glanced out the window.
“Don’t worry about Maya,” Ava said, anticipating Letty’s concern. “I’ll walk over there in an hour, get her into some dry clothes, and feed her lunch. Isabelle will be home from school around one, and then she can take over.”
“You’re the boss,” Letty said.
“Stop somewhere and buy yourself a nice lunch,” Ava said, handing her a credit card. “It’s on me.”
Lettysat under an umbrella on the patio of a French bistro just up the beach road from the Murmuring Surf, and after her lunch arrived—steamed stone crab claws with a tangy mustard sauce and a crisp green salad—she sat very still for a moment, feeling alternate waves of guilt and giddiness.
It was, she thought, the first real restaurant meal she’d eaten alone since that awful Sunday afternoon back in New York. She picked up the tiny fork provided by the café and nibbled at the sweet crabmeat, savoring the opportunity to taste her food, rather than wolf it down in order to help feed her niece.
Meals with Maya were simple affairs: cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, grapes or strawberries or orange slices, spaghetti, chicken fingers, steamed carrots or broccoli, hot dogs or hamburgers, and her default dinner choice, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato or chicken noodle soup.
It wasn’t as if she’d never spent time with her niece, or fed her or taken her places, while Tanya was alive, but living with and raising a four-year-old required a vast adjustment, both in her standards and her attitudes.
As she sipped her iced tea she once again pondered the issue of Maya’s future—and hers. According to Tanya’s lawyer, her sister’s estate had the potential to provide security for Maya—but only if Evan didn’t sue to retain control of the property he’d placed in Tanya’s name.
She was positive that Evan would also fight to keep Letty from becoming Maya’s legal guardian—unless, maybe? She could prove that Evan wasn’t Maya’s biological father. And that Evan had murdered Tanya. To do that, she’d need to stay out of jail.
Letty had already vowed that she wouldn’t return to New York until she could prove her own innocence—and be sure that Maya wouldn’t be placed either with Evan or in foster care.
Foster care was the dark, terrifying bogeyman in any consideration of what would become of Maya. Letty and Tanya had agreed, long ago, never to speak again about their own experience in foster care.
A month—thirty days—was all they’d spent living in a foster home in West Virginia. It happened the summer they were thirteen and fourteen. Terri’s latest boyfriend, a mean drunk who was also a local sheriff’s deputy, had confiscated Tanya’s Game Boy, after she’dflunked summer school. Tanya had persuaded Letty to run away with her. After stealing the Greyhound bus fare from Terri’s purse, they’d gotten as far as Paducah, Kentucky, before the bus driver, sensing trouble, called the authorities, who in turn called Terri.
When they returned home, Terri’s boyfriend told the local child welfare authorities that the two girls were ungovernable, wildly out of control, and petty thieves.
Thirty days. They’d spent the time living with a sour-faced older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Boggs, who dragged them to a fundamentalist church three times a week. They weren’t allowed to attend the local school, which the couple considered “ungodly,” and instead were forced to work in the couple’s garden for hours in blazing heat. Tanya had taken a beating when she refused to give up her beloved pierced earrings. It wasn’t until they’d managed to call their grandmother one night, when the couple was out of the house, that they’d been returned home to Terri, who reluctantly kicked her boyfriend to the curb.
Maya, Letty vowed, would never go through what she and Tanya had endured.
The server brought her check and offered her a to-go cup of iced tea. Remembering her own not-so-long-ago waitress days, Letty left a big tip and headed off to the patio-furniture clearance center.
Shewandered around the enormous showroom in a daze. There were more picnic tables and umbrellas, lounge chairs, swivel chairs, sectionals that seated twelve, entire outdoor kitchens, and firepits than she’d ever seen in one place. The selection was overwhelming.
Finally, she found a display of lightweight but sturdy aluminum-frame lounge chairs. They had heavy plastic strapping in pastel-candy shades of yellow, coral, aqua, mint, and pink, almost the exact colors of the units at the Murmuring Surf. She flipped the tag on one of the chairs and winced. They were 150 dollars apiece.
“Too much,” she muttered, anticipating her employer’s reaction to such a hefty price tag.
Just around the corner from that display she found the warehouse’s Last Chance clearance center. Shoved in the corner were two stacks of the same chairs she’d just spotted—but in an unfortunate shade of brown. A bright orange starburst sticker was hand-labeled with the price. Eighty-five dollars. She found a salesman and asked about delivery options, then texted photos of the chairs to Ava.
“My God, those are ugly,” Ava said, when she called back. “But I guess they’ll do. When can they deliver?”
