One is the loneliest number

Vera Polk was tired. Her younger sister had descended on her for the four-day Thanksgiving weekend with only a few days notice, and she’d shown up with her new girlfriend and her daughters in tow.

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Vera had given Kim and Sarah her room and bedded down her nieces on the pull-out couch, which left her sleeping on a blow-up mattress on the floor of the room she used as her office. She hadn’t slept very well and the sleep deficit was still playing havoc with her biorhythms more than a week after her guests had gone home.

Guests.

Hah.

The visit had been a disaster.

She hadn’t expected to be cooking over the holiday. Usually she and her best friend hit the Thanksgiving buffet at the Sportsman’s Lodge and then went to a movie afterwards. It was low-stress and she could eat herself willy without having all those tempting leftovers sitting around afterwards.

When Kim had called her on Tuesday to announce she was coming—it was Kim’s universe, Vera just lived in it—Vera had scrambled to assemble the necessary ingredients for a Thanksgiving feast, spending way too much money on pre-made dishes so she wouldn’t have to spend way too much time in the kitchen.

It was soon obvious that Kim’s intention in coming to visit had not been to spend time with her sister but to use Vera’s condo as a free home base for a four-day vacation.

Sarah had made it very clear she was not impressed with the nest Vera had made for herself—a comfy, cozy two-bedroom off Magnolia close enough to the high school where she worked that she could walk there if she wanted.

“You should rent out this extra bedroom Vera,” Sarah had suggested when she saw Vera’s home office. “Someone to help you out with the mortgage.”

“My home is paid for,” Vera said.

“Well, for companionship then,” Sarah said. “We worry about you being alone.”

“Why would you worry about me?” Vera asked. “You just met me.”

Sarah had given her a pitying smile. “No need to be defensive Vera.”

Oh, no reason at all, you self-righteous bitch.

“Vera needs the office,” Kim had said hastily. “She’s not just a math teacher, she writes too.”

“That’s nice,” Sarah said. “Would I have read anything you’ve written?”

She didn’t bother to disguise the smirk on her face.

Not unless you have a post-graduate degree in chaos theory, Vera thought.

“I doubt it,” she said.

“Well, I don’t read many novels,” Sarah said.

Fuck you.