LITMIR.BIZ

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have a problem.”

      “Oh?”

      “Yes, Johnny has been fighting with Kyle again.” Big surprise. It was like saying Churchill and Hitler had had another disagreement. “It seems both of them wanted to ride the fire engine, but Johnny refused to let Kyle have a turn.”

      Kyle was a bully. Easily two years older than Johnny and at least twenty pounds heavier, the kid picked on Johnny every single day. One would have thought the facility administrator might have taken the older, bigger child to task, but she never did. Kyle’s parents were a whole lot richer than Kit, and if Mizzzzzzz Phillips had to alienate either boy’s parents, it was going to be Johnny’s every time.

      And it was.

      Kit took a short breath. “Ellen, look, can’t you please just separate them for the rest of the day?” She looked at the clock. Three o’clock. “It’s only another two hours or so, and I have a million things I have to get done.”

      “I’m trying to do my job, too, Ms. Macy, but that’s difficult to do with these hellions creating chaos for me.”

      Hellions. Man, she’d hissed it like a curse. “Well, maybe Kyle’s parents can pick him up this time.”

      The phone line seemed to crackle with the chill of her response. “But you are in the building next door to ours. I would hate to ask Mr. Cherkins to come all the way downtown when you’re right here.”

      Yes. Yes, she was right here. And that was the only reason she still had Johnny in the Petite Care Center. She was seriously thinking it wasn’t worth it.

      If Johnny hadn’t been caught in the middle of this, Kit’s response would have been different, but she didn’t want to instigate an argument only to have Ellen take it out on the boy.

      She looked at the clock on her desk. Three-oh-three. She sighed heavily. “I’ll be right there.”

      “He wouldn’t let me ride.”

      “I believe you.” Kit toted Johnny along the sidewalk toward the old building that had served as Home Life’s headquarters since 1948. “But I’ve told you before to avoid that kid. If he’s playing with something, you have to find something else to play with. If he’s not near you, he can’t fight with you.”

      “But I was there first!” Johnny’s voice rang with the injustice of it. Obviously he’d had to explain this to Ellen, too, because his face crinkled the way it always did when he was truly frustrated.

      “Then you should have walked away.” Kit heard her own advice and stopped. To hell with hurrying back to work. This was more important.

      She knelt down in front of her son on the grungy sidewalk, holding his slight shoulders in her hands. “I take it back, Johnny. You shouldn’t have. You can’t walk away every time a bully tries to take something from you. You did the right thing. I’m glad you stood up for yourself.”

      A dent formed in the perfectly smooth skin over his brow. “You are?” His blue eyes went dark with confusion. “But you just said—”

      “I know, baby. But I was wrong. It’s easier to walk away from bullies sometimes, but it’s not always right.” She pulled him close for a hug, reveling in the soft, soapy smell of his skin and hair. She kissed the cottony-soft blond head and drew back. “Okay?”

      “I don’t want to go back there.”

      It broke her heart. He was there for her convenience, not because it was best for him. There was no pretending otherwise. She was best for him. And since she couldn’t be there all the time, she was going to have to find something else. Something that wasn’t Mizzzzzzz Phillips. “Remember how I told you I was going to try and put you in that Montessori school near our new house?”

      “School?” His eyes lit up. He was enamored with the idea of school in the way only a person who had never been could be.

      She nodded, but fear surged in her heart rather than the hope she saw in his. What if it didn’t work out? It didn’t bear thinking about. “Well, the application came in the mail today and I’m going to send it back to them this afternoon. Well, tomorrow afternoon.” After she was paid. The seventy-five-dollar application fee was nonnegotiable.

      She knew because she’d tried to negotiate it.

      “My new school,” he said with a small nod and the kind of smile that made her determine right there and then that she’d get him into the school even if she had to rob a bank to do it. “And Kyle Cherkins won’t be there, right?”

      “No, he won’t.” She stood up again and took his little warm hand, leading him into the office. “Okay. Here we are. You know the drill. Sit quietly and color. No talking, no running, no interrupting me when I’m on the phone and no asking why Miss Pratt’s ankles are so wrinkly. Got it?”

      “I know, I know.”

      “Mommy! Mommy, Mommy.” Tap, tap, tap on her arm. “Look, Mommy.”

      Kit held her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and shot Johnny a shut up look. She returned to her call. “So you’re saying you lost all of the documentation?”

      The bank official on the other end of the line cleared his throat. “Your former loan officer left in something of a hurry. We don’t know exactly where she put all the files she was working on. It’s caused quite a backup, I must say.”

      Kit’s heart lodged in her throat. “I’m not going to lose my interest rate, am I?”

      “I sincerely hope not.”

      Kit’s stomach dropped. “Wait. Sincerely hope not isn’t good enough. I need to know.” Or what? Or she’d go to another company? Although her credit was good, there were a few tiny glitches—a forgotten department store credit card that she’d once been thirty-one days late in paying, a collection effort on the part of Big Jugs magazine for a subscription she’d never ordered—that she’d had to clear with Best State Mortgage. She did not want to start the process over again.

      “We’ll do our best, Ms. Macy. If you could just get your bank statements, tax forms, W-2’s and employer’s statement to us, we’ll get right on it.”

      “Employer’s statement?” Unbelievable. They needed something new every single time she talked to them.

      “Just something stating your year-to-date earnings and projected income.”

      “Okay.” She glanced at Johnny. Maybe it was a good thing she’d already gotten him, because now she was going to have to stay after and hope the editor, Ebbit, had time to write something up. “Anything else?”

      “It’s all on the checklist.”

      There was a beep on the line. The phone said it was in-house. Ebbit himself. “Okay, Mr. Black, I have copies of everything else, so I’ll just overnight them to you again.”

      “No need to hurry.”

      “No need to hurry?” Her voice leaped toward hysteria. “I’m supposed to close on the house in twenty-eight days.”

      There was a nerve-racking pause.

      Then the sound of papers shuffling on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, did you say twenty-eight days? I have you down for September.”

      Johnny tapped Kit’s arm and she pulled it away, turning her office chair around. “No, it’s this month. July 30.” It was all she could do to stay calm. If this stupid company prevented her from getting her house because one person screwed up, she’d—

      “I’ll make a note of it,” the loan officer said noncommittally.

      Kit’s phone beeped again.

      She thought her head might explode.

      “All right. I have to take this call, Mr. Black, so I’ll just collect the information and

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