Chapter Four
Her neighbor might not be a pervert or a nerdy ax murderer, but Kyra was beginning to suspect he was a Number One Ass.
Okay, yes, no one knew better than Kyra that Ruby could be a pest, and the kid had gone across the fence again in spite of being told more than once she was not to do it. But she was six, and that man was very judgmental, and Kyra did not like judgmental people. She’d had her fill of them, thank you, since the moment she’d gotten herself knocked up and endured all the side eyes as her belly grew.
She was tired of whispered speculation about the sort of person she was. Today was her day off, for God’s sake, and she was entitled to a drink if she wanted one, but she hadn’t actually had anything to drink! She’d brought the wine out here and set it on the railing, then had made the mistake of lying down in the hammock. The breeze was soft and cool, the leaves of the maple trees were rustling, and the perpetual exhaustion that seemed to surround her every day had crept over her before she could take more than a sip.
She would have been just fine, would have grabbed her forty winks and been back at mother duty, if Ruby had stayed on the damn porch. Ruby was generally pretty good about it, but she just had to have those butterfly wings from the dollar store, and she just had to see if they would fly, and really, who could blame her? What was the point of butterfly wings if they didn’t fly?
Kyra looked at her daughter now. She was drawing something that resembled the rock that Patrick the starfish lived under next to the pineapple under the sea. The theme song from SpongeBob SquarePants wormed into Kyra’s head and stuck there, adding to her disgruntlement.
She glanced back across the fence at the cottage next door. Just her luck to get a troglodyte for a neighbor.
When they’d first moved in, Ruby kept showing up at Mrs. McCauley’s house, the big Victorian that sat on the hill just above the cottages. The porch swing had beckoned Ruby, but Mrs. McCauley had understood—she was a grandmother. She didn’t freak out when a kid wasn’t perfect and didn’t do what she was supposed to do. She served Ruby homemade lemonade and sat on the porch swing with her, just talking, until Kyra found her. Mrs. McCauley got that Kyra shoved about thirty hours into every day and was dealing with a babysitter she could afford instead of the good one she wanted.
But then Ruby had discovered that damn mutt living at Number Two, and Kyra did mean the dog. Why didn’t the dog’s troglodyte owner understand that any animal with a wagging tail, a crooked ear, and a cocked head was like crack cocaine to a little kid? They couldn’t stay away.
“Ruby,” she said gruffly and swiped up her wine. She paused to drink. “What do I have to do to make you stay on this porch when I tell you to?”
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” Ruby said.
“I don’t think you are,” Kyra said evenly. “Because if you were sorry, you’d stop disobeying me and stop going over that fence.”
“I went around,” Ruby pointed out.
“Under, over, around,” Kyra said impatiently. “Don’t do it. I know you like the dog, but the dog belongs to Mr. Bishop, and he doesn’t want you over there.”
Ruby’s chin began to quiver. “I was just testing my wings.”
“I know,” Kyra said with a sigh. She wished she could explain to Ruby that there were people in this world who were just assholes, and there was nothing you could do about it. “You can test your wings in our yard, on our porch.”
Ruby lowered her head, chastised.
Now Kyra felt like a heel. This was the part of parenting she hated—the correcting, the discipline, the whole scene about being responsible and making sure her daughter grew up to be a fabulous adult. It was hard to bust the chops of a six-year-old, and even though she’d intended to study tonight . . . Ruby looked as if she could use a friend. Kyra glanced through the screen door to the clock hanging on the kitchen wall. “Come on,” she said, and with a sigh of defeat, she held out her hand to her daughter.
Ruby eyed her hand suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because I feel like playing Candy Land.”
Rudy gasped. Her big blue eyes rounded with surprise. “Yay!” she shouted, throwing her arms in the air, and clomped as fast as she could in boots on the wrong feet to the screen door, throwing it open and letting it bang behind her.
Kyra couldn’t even guess how many rounds of Candy Land they’d played before she’d convinced Ruby it was time for hot dogs—another nutritional fail for her daughter, but come on, they both loved them—and toddled her off to bed a half hour past her bedtime. Kyra spent the rest of the evening picking up the cottage and washing dishes. When she got her real estate license, she was going to get a dishwasher. And a washing machine. And a dryer.
Yep, she had some really big dreams.
This dream of becoming a real estate agent, however—a relatively new dream—was beginning to take firmer root in her head. Kyra had spent so many years making it from one day to the next, trying to hold down a job and care for a daughter, that she hadn’t allowed herself to think too far ahead. Or to dwell on the missed opportunities. She had concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, on constantly searching for a better job with better hours so she could spend as much time with Ruby as possible.
Trace had been right about East Beach—the tips were great. The living was far less expensive than the city. She’d found this great little cottage that she could actually afford, bigger than anything she and Ruby had ever lived in before. She had finally saved enough money for the deposit and first month’s rent, and at the beginning of the month, she and Ruby had moved out of the extended-stay hotel.
But that wasn’t enough. For a while now Kyra had been seriously considering what was next for her and Ruby. As good as things were going, she knew that with the first cold snap the summer people would take their bulging wallets and go home.
She’d been mulling over what else she might do, how she might earn a decent enough living so that she could perhaps one day move into a real house, but nothing she thought of had seemed particularly viable, given her limited resources and need to be around for Ruby. But then one day, she happened to overhear a conversation between two women at the bistro. One of them mentioned she’d just sold her lake house for $1.2 million.
One point two million dollars.
Expensive lake houses surrounded Lake Haven, and it seemed like every other day a new one was for sale or had just sold. Kyra had never thought of real estate as a career until that moment, but once the idea was planted, she’d started looking into it. She found out what the requirements were to buy and sell real estate. She had to take so many hours of coursework and pass a test, but it looked doable.
She’d caught up with a woman who frequented the bistro and who sold real estate around Black Springs. “It’s great!” the woman said when Kyra asked her how she liked her work. “Are you thinking of getting into the business?”
“I’m considering it,” Kyra said.
“I love it. You can literally work your own hours . . . well, there’s a lot of weekend work, because that’s when people are out looking for houses, but during the week you can work whenever you like.”
Weekend work aside, the idea of flexible hours that would work around Ruby’s schedule sounded ideal to Kyra. She next called a company that offered the required coursework and licensing. “If you’re smart and you’re willing to hustle, you can make a very good living at real estate,” the woman had said. “You sound like a real go-getter to me. I think you’d do great.”
Kyra had realized that was a full-on sales spin the woman had just given her, but she knew how to hustle. She thought she might be pretty good at it, and she at last decided to go for it. What did she have to lose? Nothing. But she had so much to gain. So she’d borrowed five hundred dollars from her dad for the online course.
Now her only problem was finding the time to get through the course and take the exam. Speaking of which, Kyra glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to ten. She groaned, but she opened her workbook and began to study.