LITMIR.BIZ

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years safely enclosed in a bubble-wrapped life, partially because of her mother’s protectiveness, partially from her own shyness and fears. But she didn’t want to exist like that anymore.

      When her father had been alive, he had understood the importance of pushing her to be independent. He had supported her decision to attend a deaf university in Rochester, and he was the one who had encouraged her to communicate both orally and with ASL, American Sign Language. But her father had died of a heart attack at the tail end of her freshman year in college and after she had come home to her grieving mother, she had never gone back to Rochester.

      It had seemed just too cruel to leave her mother and return to a school she had never wanted Laurel to attend in the first place. Laurel had taken a temporary job at Sweet Stuff candy store and somehow, without her even being quite sure how, five years had slid by. Cut off from the deaf community she had reveled in at college and isolated from the hearing by her own circumstances.

      When Aunt Susan had called requesting help, Laurel had felt seized by the opportunity to get out there in the real world, meet people, enjoy herself. And she was still going to do that, Russ Evans and his ominous warnings or not.

      Wiggling the computer mouse on her desk, she watched her kittens-in-a-basket screen saver disappear. Pinching off a piece of the muffin she’d set on a paper napkin, Laurel popped it in her mouth and opened her e-mail.

      She had a message from Michelle, and interestingly enough, one from Trevor Dean as Russ Evans. It surprised her to see it there, boldly sitting in her e-mail box with the subject heading, I’M SORRY. Somehow she had thought she wouldn’t hear from him again, that his amusement with her would be over now that he had stood her up.

      Clicking the message, it opened as her cat, Ferris, leaped onto her lap and settled his considerable orange bulk. Laurel finger-spelled HELLO onto his back, digging into his rich fur and feeling the vibration of his purr. By herself, she never spoke out loud, but relaxed in the silence, mind drifting, lazy, the way she never could when she was communicating with other people. That required intense concentration, to understand and to be understood.

      Dean’s e-mail had been sent at 6:47 P.M., when she had already been on the way to the coffee shop.

      Hi Laurel, I hope I catch you before you leave. Something’s come up with work, a case I’ve got a lead on, and I’m going to have to cancel our plans. I’m really looking forward to meeting you, but can we make it another time? Please, please, forgive me?

      —Russ

      If she had read that without meeting Russ Evans, she would have been satisfied with Dean’s excuse. She would have appreciated the pleading, wondering about the excitement of being with the police department. She would have thought he was cute, sweet, a good guy.

      Now she knew he was a thief and a liar, and somehow next to the real Russ Evans, this e-mail sounded weak and feminine, and nothing like a cop would really sound.

      There was nothing left to do but feel like a total schmuck. And while she lamented her schmuckishness, her determination to bust out of the bubble of her narrow existence grew. She liked who she was, enjoyed helping people, but she felt that stuck the way she was in the confines of her sugarcoated life, everything was completely meaningless. Laurel wanted to do something important, make a difference, matter.

      Like protect other women from Trevor Dean.

      She was lucky. Her heart and her finances were intact. Her pride and her confidence were a little dented, but she’d recover. How must it feel to lose everything you had to a man who’d sworn to love you and didn’t?

      She was thinking it would feel like crap, and then some.

      Russ wouldn’t be in the office, she didn’t think, so she wouldn’t call him there. And she couldn’t call his home number because she wouldn’t know when the answering machine picked up. She’d call the PD number in the morning, let him know what she’d done. Because for the first time in her almost twenty-six years of unexciting vanilla-pudding existence, Laurel was going to take decisive action.

      Hi Russ,

      I’m sorry we missed each other! I hope everything went well with your case—I think it’s just amazing how the police can solve crimes. I’d love to make new plans to meet you. Just say when and where.

      Ttys

       Laurel

      She clicked SEND and stroked Ferris’s fur in satisfaction, wondering if the rush she felt was from excitement or the excess of caffeine in all those mocha lattes. Either way, this felt pretty dang good. She was lying, and doing it well. Her mother would be so proud.

      Of course, e-mail worked to her advantage. Face-to-face, she was likely to blurt out the whole truth, then cap it off by suggesting to Dean he get help through counseling.

      Laurel clicked on Michelle’s e-mail, which was short and to the point.

      well??? how was russ? did you bag him? <g>

      Laurel rolled her eyes. Michelle hadn’t been witness to that look of sheer terror on Russ’s face when she’d brought up the whole “Let’s you and me have sex” thing. Laurel remembered it all too clearly and was pretty sure she was permanently scarred. Or Russ was.

      Though Michelle lived an hour and a half away in Erie, Pennsylvania, they e-mailed daily and were probably closer now than they’d been in college. Michelle was married now, but she liked to participate in chats and loops with people she’d gone to high school with in Cleveland, which is how she’d seen Russ’s name.

      He no-showed,

      Laurel typed quickly. Then added,

      But the REAL Russ Evans showed up an hour later, the one from your yearbook. Turns out I was chatting with a fake, a con artist…YUCK, huh?

      Laurel sent the message, leaned back in her chair, and finally unwound her scarf from around her neck. She tossed it on the bed with the discarded sweaters. Ferris’s green eyes looked up at her in rebuke as her movements jostled him.

      “Sorry.” Stroking his fur, not wanting to toss Ferris to the floor, Laurel just sat there and brooded. It wasn’t like her to give in to self-pity, but when faced with a lifetime of celibacy and the realization that you’d spent your twenties sorting Jelly Bellies, it was a little hard to put on a happy face.

      And it was all her fault. She couldn’t blame her mother for everything. She hadn’t been locked in, à la Cinderella, and her room was a far cry from a dreary tower. It surrounded her, pretty and light, full of white furniture, dried flowers, and framed pictures of friends and family. This had been her suite—the trio of bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room—since she was sixteen, yet Laurel was always aware that this was her mother’s house, no matter what it said in her father’s will. This was her childhood home, not her own. Not a home she’d built herself, decorated and labored over, and gasped when the first mortgage bill arrived.

      She was stuck in adolescence, like a female Peter Pan without the green tights.

      An INSTANT MESSAGE box from Michelle popped up.

      what??? a con artist? that’s crazy!!! what does he con?

      Needy women like her, apparently.

      He steals money from women, women who trust him, think they’re dating him. :-/

      disgusting bastard…have they caught him??

      Nope, but the real Russ Evans really is a cop, and he was there hoping this Dean guy would show up. I’m glad he didn’t, so I didn’t have to see him. I feel violated or something, Michelle, I mean I told him personal stuff…

      Laurel didn’t know what she was so bothered by. She hadn’t told him anything important, any deep dark secrets like the fact that she still ate SpaghettiOs, or had a Britney Spears CD.

      did you ever have an orgasm while chatting with him?

      Eeew.

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