New Uses For Old Boyfriends Read Online Free Page B

envelopes.
    â€œYes. The pilot light’s out and I need to take a shower and Ican’t deal with one more thing right now. You’ll handle it, won’t you? Oh, I’m so glad to see you, sweet pea. Your father was right—he always said you’d take care of me.”
    *   *   *
    Lila pressed her back against the bathroom door, dabbing the sweat off her forehead with a fluffy white hand towel made from the finest Egyptian cotton.
    She could hear her mother bustling around the kitchen, making tea and cutting up a single apple, which was Daphne’s idea of a decadent late-night snack. The water heater was still inoperable, but Daphne’s relief was evident. Because her daughter was here to take care of everything.
    Lila rattled off a string of obscenities into the Egyptian cotton and resolved to be the daughter her mother needed her to be. She had been fired from the land of late-night TV shopping and ruthlessly litigated out of her marriage, so helping her mother was her full-time job for now. She would strive to uphold the image her father had always had of her as the gifted golden child. She would use whatever weapons she had in her arsenal.
    She would fix this damn pilot light if it was the last thing she did.
    After splashing her face with cold water, she emerged from the powder room with what she hoped was an air of calm capability.
    â€œLet’s take a look at the water heater.”
    Daphne offered her an apple slice, then handed over a three-ring binder labeled “House Instructions.”
    â€œWhat’s this?” Lila flipped through the laminated papers, which were full of notes and diagrams in her father’s blocky handwriting. There were colored dividers marked “bathroom,” “kitchen,” “furnace,” and “A/C system.”
    â€œDad left you a book of instructions?”
    Daphne broke into tears. “He put that together years ago, so I could do things like light the pilot lights when he was out of town.”
    That was typical of her father—always taking care of “his girls.” Lila waited for the wave of emotion to pass, then asked, “So you must have dealt with this stuff before, right?”
    â€œNo. I always just waited until he came back to fix it or called one of the neighbors.”
    And this time, her father wasn’t coming back. Lila closed her eyes for a moment, then forced them open and flipped to the page marked “water heater.” She found her father’s explanation of how to rekindle the pilot light and read it several times. “Okay . . . okay . . . This doesn’t look so hard.”
    Her mother regarded her with a mixture of hope and despair. “So you can do it.”
    â€œYes.” Lila took a deep breath. “I think I can do it.”
    *   *   *
    â€œI can’t do this.” Fifteen minutes and two singed fingers later, Lila gave up.
    â€œBut you’re following the instructions.”
    â€œI know! Which is why the pilot light should be lit.” Lila, crouched on the epoxy-coated cement floor in the garage, shoved her sweat-drenched hair back from her face. “And yet.”
    Her mother collapsed against the hood of the pickup truck with expired tags and started to sob.
    â€œDon’t cry, Mom. Don’t cry.” In desperation, Lila flicked the cigarette lighter’s spark wheel one more time. But she couldn’t even get a flicker of flame.
    â€œWhat are we going to do now?” Daphne choked out.
    Lila considered this for a long moment, then resigned herself to the inevitable. “Now we move on to plan B. How late is the hardware store open tonight?”
    â€œHow on earth would I know? I’ve never set foot in the hardware store.”
    Lila led the way back into the house and checked her watch: quarter to ten. “Well, let’s hope they’re open till ten, because there might