Page 13 of By A Thread

I found comfort in the fact that a woman as smart and sharp as Dalessandra could be hosed too.

My gaze flicked over the screen of the laptop to the forty-ton porcelain clawfoot tub still lodged in the living room floor. Then up to the gaping hole in the ceiling.

Yeah. Even smart and sharp got hosed on occasion.

“Knock knock!” A cheery woman with a thick Romanian accent chirped as she pushed her way in through the front door.

I really needed to replace the lock and actually use it.

“Mrs. Grosu,” I said, snapping my laptop closed and mentally resigning myself to picking up the rest of my research after my two bartending shifts. If the Wi-Fi held.

“Hello, neighbor,” she said, bustling inside, a yellow casserole dish in her hands.

Mrs. Grosu was a widow who lived next door in a tidy brick two-story with a hedgerow so precise it looked as though it had been trimmed with lasers. She had four children and seven grandkids who came for Sunday lunch every week.

I adored her.

“I brought you Amish country casserole,” she said cheerily. My dear, adorable, elderly neighbor had two great loves in this life: Feeding people and Pinterest. She’d deemed this year to be her cultural culinary exploration, and I was along for the ride.

“That’s very sweet of you, Mrs. Grosu,” I said.

As bad as literally everything else was in my life, I’d hit the lottery with my father’s neighbors. They were delightfully entertaining and absurdly generous.

She clucked her tongue. “When are you going to get that tub out of your living room?”

“Soon,” I promised. The thing had to weigh three hundred pounds. It was not a one-woman job.

“You say the word, and I have my sons come move it for you.”

Mrs. Grosu’s sons were in their late fifties and in no shape for heavy lifting.

“I’ll figure it out,” I insisted.

With an eye-roll, she headed toward the kitchen. “I’ll put this away. Instructions are on the sticky note,” she called in her thick accent.

“Thank you,” I yelled after her, tunneling my way out of my burrow of blankets.

“This is a thankyou,” she insisted, returning to the living room as I climbed off the couch. “You got my groceries when my feet were swollen like watermelons last week.”

We were in an endless reciprocation of favors, and I kind of enjoyed it. It felt nice to be able to give something,anythingreally, when resources were depleted.

She tut-tutted when she looked at the thermostat. “It’s colder than a snowman’s balls in here,” she complained.

“It’s not so bad,” I insisted, stirring the fire in the brick fireplace my father had rarely ever used. I had one more log allotted for the morning, and then I’d turn on the furnace to heat the house to a balmy fifty degrees while I was at work.

I’d never been poor before, but I felt like I was really getting the hang of it.

“Why do you not take my money?” the woman pouted, crossing her arms in front of her gigantic bosoms. Everything about Mrs. Grosu was soft, squishy. Except for her motherly tone.

“You already paid for the dumpster,” I reminded her.

“Bah!” she said, waving her hand as if it had been nothing to shell out a few hundred dollars to cover the cost of an eyesore that was lowering her own property value.

“This is my mess. I’m going to fix it,” I told her. “You need your money for your grandkids’ Easter baskets and for your single lady cruise.”

“Did I tell you that we’re going to a male cabaret in Cozumel?” she asked, throwing her head back and roaring with laughter.

She had. And I still couldn’t get the vision out of my head. Mrs. Grosu and five of her closest girlfriends took a girls’ trip once a year. I was amazed they’d never been arrested yet. But there was always Cozumel.