Almost Crimson Read Online Free Page B

rent and hadn’t had transportation to get herself and her mother around from this end of the city. Now, her friend’s tenant had skipped out on her. CeCe had witnessed plenty of couches, lamps, and laundry baskets filled with clothes sneaking away in the middle of the night in the final years at her and her mother’s old apartment.
    CeCe closed the door behind them as Doris’ soft-sole shoes squished across the hardwood floor to the oversized window overlooking the back yard. CeCe knew how much Doris loved this little house. It had been a victory for her in every possible way: engineering a divorce from her philandering husband of nearly twenty years, and stumbling into an intimate clique of socialites who paid her handsomely to clean their condos and, ultimately, provide a bit of homespun therapy while they hunted for the next prenuptial agreement. Doris had bought this house, her first, with part of what she earned from the Ladies, as she called them. She never gave CeCe hard numbers, but CeCe had long estimated that Doris’ job at Sears was simply for insurance and rainy-day money. She’d purchased other properties, her condo in Florida and homes for her sons, but this one was special, and CeCe was saddened for her friend.
    CeCe fiddled awkwardly with her keys, not sure if Doris would want space or a hug. She watched Doris take in a slow, deep breath before turning around. Her face was full of light and whimsy.
    â€œTake a look around, kiddo,” Doris said with a smile. “I gotta go see a man about a horse.”
    â€œI’m a ranch hand now?” a man’s voice called from the kitchen.
    Doris laughed and squish-squished toward the kitchen door, saying, “You can be a cowboy, if that makes you feel better . . . ”
    CeCe shook her head as Doris disappeared into the doorway that held the man’s voice. Whatever happened with her tenant, CeCe thought, Doris had it under control. CeCe couldn’t be surprised. Since the day Doris had adopted her in the smokers’ garden more than seven years ago, CeCe had always known Doris to have a plan. Whether convincing mall management to support a cross-store secret Santa tradition, helping her youngest son secure a grant for a conservation study in Belize, coaching CeCe through her first attempts at dating, or researching retirement communities in Florida, Doris was always thinking about the next move. Doris had once told Cece that after spending half of her life doing as she was told, she was now intent on creating her own pathways out of this world. CeCe often wondered what such an assembly of thoughts might feel like.

SIX
    MONSTER
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    CECE'S STOMACH JUMPED AND FLIPPED beneath her new dress. It was green with a rainbow on the left edge of its hem. CeCe didn’t even care that it had someone else’s name written on the tag.
    â€œNobody will know but you, CrimsonBaby,” her mother said.
    CeCe was most excited that the Sad had released her mother for a day, long enough to go with CeCe to her new school. The two of them waited on the corner next to their building, on the side of the street with the record shop and not the side with the hardware store, as Ms. Boylin had instructed. The yellow bus drove past them on Kennedy without slowing down at all. CeCe and her mother watched the bus whisk by in gaped-mouth panic.
    â€œIt’s coming around!” a man’s voice called. Across the street, in front of the hardware store, a small gray-haired man at the newspaper stand perched on his stool with a daily relaxed in his hands. “The school buses aren’t allowed to stop on the boulevard so the driver has to make his turn on Sixty-Fifth.”
    CeCe looked up to her mother and Carla nodded at the newspaperman. CeCe was relieved her mother was still here. The Sad could wrap itself around her so quickly. They turned toward the whine of bus brakes and watched it lumber around the corner.
    â€œThank