Page 1 of The Playboy and the Widow
One
“Mom, I don’t have any lunch money.”
Diana Collins stuck her head out from the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and wiped the perspiration from her brow. “Bring me my purse.”
“Mother,” eight-year-old Katie whined dramatically, “I’m going to miss my bus.”
“All right, all right.” Hurriedly Diana scooted out from her precarious position and reached for a rag to dry her hands.
“We’re out of hair spray,” Joan, Katie’s elder sister, cried. “You can’t honestly expect me to go to school without hair spray.”
“Honey, you’re in fifth grade, not high school. Your hair looks terrific.”
Joan glared at her mother as though the thirty-year-old were completely dense. “I need hair spray if it’s going to stay this way.”
Diana shook her head. “Did you look in my bathroom?”
“Yes. There wasn’t any.”
“Check the towel drawer.”
“The towel drawer?”
Diana shrugged. “I was hiding it.”
Joan frowned and gave her mother a disapproving look. “Honestly!”
“Mom, my lunch money,” Katie cried, waving her mother’s purse under Diana’s nose.
With quick fingers, Diana located five quarters and promptly handed them to her younger daughter.
Five minutes later the front screen door slammed, and Diana sighed her relief. No sound was ever more pleasant than that of her daughters darting off to meet the school bus. The silence was too inviting to resist, and Diana poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, savoring the quiet. She grabbed her laptop and, automatically went in search of part-time positions. It was tempting, although Diana wanted to wait until the girls were a bit older. Before Stan had died, there’d been few problems with money. Now, however, they cropped up daily, and Diana was torn with the desire to remain at home with her children, or seek the means to provide extra income. For three years Diana had robbed Peter to pay Paul, juggling funds from one account to another. Between the social security check, the insurance check and the widow’s fund from Stan’s job, she and the girls were barely able to eke by. She cut back on expenses where she could, but recently her options had become more limited. There were plenty of macaroni-and-cheese dinners now, especially toward the end of the month. Diana could always ask for help from her family, but she was hesitant. Her parents lived in Wichita and were concerned enough about her living alone with the girls in far-off Seattle. She simply didn’t want to add to their worries.
“Pride cometh before a fall,” she muttered into the steam rising from her coffee cup.
A loud knock against the screen was followed by a friendly call. “Yoo-hoo, Diana. It’s Shirley,” her neighbor called, letting herself in. “I don’t suppose you’ve got another cup of that.”
“Sure,” Diana said, pleased to see her friend. “Help yourself.”
Shirley took a cup down from the cupboard and poured her own coffee before joining Diana. “What’s all that?” She cocked her head toward the sink.
“It’s leaking again.”
Shirley rolled her eyes. “Diana, you’re going to have to get someone to look at it.”
“I can do it,” she said without a whole lot of confidence. “I watched a YouTube video online that tells you how to build a shopping center in your spare time. If I can repair the outlet in Joan’s room, then I can figure out why the sink keeps leaking.”
Shirley looked doubtful. “Honey, listen, you’d be better off to contact a plumber...”
“No way! Do you have any idea how much those guys charge? An appointment with a brain surgeon would be cheaper.”
Shirley chuckled and took a sip of her coffee. “George could check it for you tonight after dinner.”
“Shirley, no. I appreciate the offer, but...”
“George was Stan’s friend.”
“But that doesn’t commit him to a lifetime of repairing leaking pipes.”
