Old Flames

Old Flames: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Lainie stared at her computer monitor for at least twenty minutes before finally giving up.  She could edit the mess out of the new non-fiction novel that her agent sent her, and it would still zonk out an insomniac within three seconds.  A total snoozer.  She'd gone through two pots of coffee just to make it this far -- the second chapter -- and with a deadline of only ten days to finish the grammatical editing, she knew she shouldn't stop working so early. But...

Her kids were on a play date with some new friends that they met at their new preschool, and Lainie had the house to herself for another hour.  It was quiet...too quiet for a mom with four-year-old twins.  Noise and chaos had been her life for so long that she honestly didn't know what to do with all the peaceful silence.  She scanned her memory for what she'd done before she had a husband and family.

Well...she lived in a college dorm with two-hundred other girls...and she went to class with sixty-thousand other students.  She hadn't been totally alone since high school, when she could lock her bedroom door and lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling while listening to Everlast and Sugar Ray on her stereo and talking on the phone to her friends or Aaron.

In the three weeks since moving across the street from her high school boyfriend, she'd barely seen him.  His neighbor, a nosey but sweet lady, Mrs. Longstern, told Lainie that he worked shifts that lasted for days at a time.  So, he'd be gone for two or three days, and then be home for another two or three days, and the pattern would repeat.  When he was away, a teenage took care of Aaron's dog, a droopy-skinned, squat thing that tended to do his business in Mrs. Longstern's rose bushes.  Lainie shuddered every time she saw the beast.  He wasn't vicious-looking, but she never liked dogs of any kind.

When Aaron was at home, he remained active.  Getting up at five in the morning to run down the street and return an hour and half later.  Always raking or mowing or trimming the giant oak trees in his yard.  Washing his car, playing street hockey with the neighborhood kids, or just generally visiting with anyone who happened by.  One  morning, Lainie was running late on getting Chris and Chloe to preschool, and Aaron stood in the middle of the street, talking to some guy in a white pick-up and blocking her driveway.  She had to pound on the horn to get them to move out of the way.  Aaron was nice enough to wave an apology, but other than the occasional greeting, they never spoke to each other since she moved in.

So, with an hour of rare Lainie-time, she decided to take a book out to her front yard and enjoy the sunshine for a while.  Her mother's housewarming gift, other than enough money to cover three months' rent, was patio furniture: a canopied swing, a couple of cushioned chairs, and a double lounger that Lainie fell in love with the first time she sat on it.  The thing was like a little piece of Heaven on earth.  She could recline fully on the striped cushions and lift her face to the sun...and just drift away for a few hours.

If she had a few free hours.

Today, she had one, and she fully intended to make the best of it.  Normally, the only time she could read for pleasure was late at night, when the twins were in bed, the dinner dishes were washed, the laundry was folded and put away, and she finished tidying up the house.  With a glass of iced tea by her elbow and the lastest novel from her favorite author in her fingers, she sighed and lost herself in someone else's world.

Ten minutes later, a cold, wet nose bumped her knee.  Lainie lowered her book and stared into the sad, soulful eyes of Bowser.  She went completely still.  She hadn't been this close to a dog in almost twenty years.  The animal gave a sharp "woof!" and bared his teeth at her. 

Lainie screamed.

*****

Aaron was in his garage, sharpening the blades of his lawn mower, when a scream of terror assaulted his ears.  His hand slipped over the sharpened blade, cutting across the fleshy web between the thumb and first finger.  He cursed loudly, and the scream tore through the neighborhood again...accompanied by a very familiar bark.