heels and rubbed the tense muscles at the back of her neck.
“Hi, Mom,” Carrie called cheerfully from the kitchen. “How was work?”
“Fine.” There was no need to burden her daughter with how terrible her day had been. Her job as an executive assistant at a large insurance agency might have sounded high-powered and influential, but in reality it was neither. Charlotte worked long hours with little appreciation or reward. For six months, ever since Harry Ward had taken over as managing director, she’d been telling herself it was time to change jobs. But she couldn’t give up the security of her position, no matter how much she disliked her boss.
“How was school?” she asked.
“Good. Tickets for the dance went on sale today.” Her daughter looked hopefully at Charlotte, as though expecting her to make some profound comment.
Charlotte chose to ignore the pointed stare. Her stand on the dance issue was causing a strain in their relationship, but she refused to give in to her daughter’s pressure. Carrie wasn’t going on an actual date. She was interested in a boy named Brad, but as far as Charlotte was concerned, Carrie could attend the dance with her girlfriends and meet him there. Good grief, the girl was only fifteen!
“Mom, can we please talk about the dance?”
“Of course, but …”
“You’re not going to change your mind, right?” Carrie guessed, then sighed. “What can I say to prove how unreasonable you’re being? Every girl in my class is going to the dance with a boy. And Brad asked me.”
Charlotte reached for an apron, tied it about her waist and opened the refrigerator door. She took out a package of ground turkey for taco salad. She wasn’t up to another round of arguments over the dance.
“Did you buy a dance ticket?” Charlotte asked, forcing an artificial lightness into her voice.
“No. I won’t, either. I’d rather sit home for the rest of my life than have my mother drop me off and pick me up. Brad’s father said he’d drive us both … What am I supposed to tell Brad? That my mother doesn’t trust his father’s driving? You’re making way too big a deal out of this.”
Ah, the certainty of youth, Charlotte mused.
“Will you think about it?” Carrie implored. “Please?”
“All right,” Charlotte promised. She hated to be so hardheaded, but when it came to her daughter, she found little room for compromise. To her way of thinking, Carrie was too young for a real date, even if the boy in question wasn’t the one driving.
The meat was simmering in the cast-iron skillet as Charlotte started to wash the lettuce. The faucet came off in her hand, squirting icy water toward the ceiling, and she gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Carrie asked, leaping up from the kitchen table where she was doing her homework.
“The faucet broke!” Already Charlotte was down on her knees, her head under the sink, searching for the valve to cut off the water supply.
“There’s water everywhere,” Carrie shrieked.
“I know.” Most of it had landed on Charlotte.
“Are you going to be able to fix it?” Carrie asked anxiously.
Charlotte sat on the floor, her back against the lower cupboards, her knees under her chin. This was all she needed to make her day complete. “I don’t know,” she muttered, pushing damp hair away from her face with both hands. “But it shouldn’t be that hard.”
“You should call the apartment manager,” Carrie said. “You’ve had to work all day. If something breaks down, he should be the one to fix it, not you. We don’t know anything about faucets. We’re helpless.”
“Helpless?” Charlotte raised her eyebrows at that. The two of them had dealt with far more difficult problems over the years. By comparison, a broken faucet was nothing. “I think we can handle it.”
“Of course we can, but why should we?” Carrie demanded. “We pay our rent on time every month. The least the manager could do is see to minor repairs. He should fix them right away, too.” She marched over to the wall phone and yanked the receiver from the hook. “Here,” she said dramatically. “You call him.”
“I … I don’t know the number.” They’d lived in the apartment for well over a year and until now there hadn’t been any reason to contact the manager.
“It’s around here somewhere,” Carrie said, pulling open the top kitchen drawer and riffling through the phone book and some other papers. Within a very brief time, she’d located the phone number. “His name is Jason Manning. He’s a veterinarian.”
“He’s a vet? I didn’t realize that.” But then, Charlotte had only met the man once, and their entire conversation had been about the apartment. He seemed pleasant enough. She’d seen him in the parking lot a few times and he struck her as an overgrown kid. Frankly, she was surprised to learn he was a veterinarian, since she’d never seen him in anything other than a baseball cap, jeans and a T-shirt. Dressing up for him was a pair of jeans that weren’t torn or stained and a sweatshirt.
“Are you going to phone him?” Carrie asked, holding out the receiver.
“I suppose I will.” Charlotte rose awkwardly to her feet in her straight skirt. By the time she was upright, her daughter had dialed the number and handed her the receiver.
“Hello,” came Jason Manning’s voice after the first ring, catching her off guard.
“Oh … hello … This is Charlotte Weston in apartment 1-A. We have a broken faucet. I managed to turn off the valve, but we’d appreciate having it repaired as quickly as possible.”
“A broken faucet,” he repeated, and although she knew it made no sense, he sounded suspicious to Charlotte, as though he thought she’d purposely interrupted his evening. She resented his attitude.
“Yes, a broken faucet,” she returned stiffly. “It came off in my hand when I went to wash some lettuce. There’s water everywhere.” A slight exaggeration, but a necessary one. “If you’d prefer, I can contact a plumber. Naturally there’ll be an additional charge for repairs this late in the day.”
He muttered something Charlotte couldn’t decipher, then said, “I’ll be right over.” He didn’t seem too pleased, but that was his problem. He shouldn’t have agreed to manage the apartments if he wasn’t willing to deal with the hassles that went along with the job.
“What did he say?” her daughter asked, eyes curious, when Charlotte hung up the phone. “Is he coming?”
“He said he’d be right over.”
“Good.” Carrie studied her critically. “You might want to change clothes.”
“Change clothes? Whatever for?” Surprised at her daughter’s concern, Charlotte glanced down at her business suit. She didn’t see anything wrong with it other than a little water, and in any event, she couldn’t care less about impressing the apartment manager.
“Whatever.”
