Love the One You Hate

I’m still staring at her bag, so it takes me a second to realize she’s holding something out for me to take.

“I wanted to give you this before I left.”

I accept the card, holding it in my hand like it’s a delicate photograph I don’t want to smudge with my dirty fingerprints. It’s thick and yet still, somehow, delicate. Gold rimmed and simple. Cornelia Cromwell is printed across the top. Below that, a phone number.

“Wh-what is this?”

She laughs. “It’s a calling card, dear.”

I stare up at her with my brows furrowed in disbelief. “And why are you giving it to me?”

She smiles then, the first I’ve seen from her, and I immediately feel bad for thinking she looked frigid earlier. She’s not. I see that now.

“Because I have a proposition for you.”3MarenI turn that card over and over in my hand like it’s one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets. I study it on the bus after my shift while squashed against the window because my seatmate has enough meat on his bones to warrant having an entire row to himself. I study it as I wait in line to use the bathroom back at the group home and after, while I heat up a can of soup in the communal kitchen. My wet hair accidentally leaves a drop of water on the edge of Cornelia’s name and I have to hurry to grab a paper towel and wipe it off.

I don’t work up the courage to call her until I suffer through another shift at Holly Home. The stares in the locker room and the whispered defamations in the break room make it clear that everyone on staff, including Mrs. Buchanan, really thinks I took that ring. They’re all so sure of my guilt that I have one brain-bending moment in which I actually ask myself, Did I steal it? Do they know something I don’t?

I barely consider it before sanity sets in. During my break, I head to Mrs. Archer’s room, hoping to borrow her phone. She’s not there when I arrive; the schedule printed on her door says she’s currently in a physical therapy session. Still, I have to go in. This is the last break I have on my shift and there’s not another phone I can use. I wish I had one of my own, but I had to cut off service a few months back so I could use the money to purchase my work uniform and shoes.

I go into rooms when the residents aren’t in them all the time to help clean and replace bed linens, but this feels different. I hesitate for a moment at her door, telling myself I don’t have another option. Whose phone am I going to borrow if I don’t use Mrs. Archer’s? Mrs. Buchanan’s? Ha. I’d ask Leroy—I think he still believes I’m innocent—but he’s not here today.

I turn the handle and hurry inside, my heart racing like I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I am, but there’s no going back now.

I pull Cornelia’s card out of my pocket and hurry to the phone on the bedside table. I dial the number and wait while it rings. Mrs. Archer has the volume turned all the way up so when the call connects and someone speaks, I wince and jerk the phone away from my ear, no doubt having gone completely deaf.

“Cromwell residence. Collins speaking.”

When he repeats the introduction a second time, I scramble to reply.

“Oh, uh…is Mrs. Cornelia there? Er, Mrs. Cromwell, that is.”

He clears his throat like I’ve already annoyed him and then says in a polished tone, “And who might I tell her is calling?”

“Right. Um, you can tell her this is Maren Mitchell. From the nursing home.”

“Maren Mitchell from the nursing home,” he repeats back to me, as if in disbelief, and I turn red from my hair to my toes. “Please give me a moment. I’ll see if Mrs. Cromwell is available to take your call.”

I’m left on hold, staring at the door, willing it to stay shut. If Mrs. Archer’s physical therapy session finishes early or if someone from housekeeping needs to access her room, they’ll find me in here talking on the phone. The tableau would be difficult to explain away. I was just cleaning her receiver!

“Maren Mitchell.”

Cornelia’s voice is a welcome relief a few moments later.

“Hi!” I say the word and then realize I don’t have a single thing to follow it up with. How are you? might be an appropriate question, but I don’t have all day, so instead of sprinkling in niceties, I cut right to the chase. “I’m calling you because I’m curious to hear about your proposition.”

“Direct—good, I like that. Yes, ‘proposition’…is that what I said yesterday? Sounds very ominous, that word.”

I wrap the phone cord around my finger, shifting my weight between my feet, anxious to get to the end of this call, to the part where she tells me she needs me to take extra care of Mrs. Archer or something. Maybe she’d even be willing to pay me a little more on the side.