Free Goldilocks by Andrew Coburn Page A

when Harold died. The opportunity to speak passed when the woman moved out of sight. Mrs. Goss returned to her flowers.
    The sun was warm on her back, and she could feel herself perspiring. Her soft fingers were hot inside her gloves as she crouched low among the lilies, of which there were a variety, so that when some were losing their bloom others were gaining theirs, ensuring color from late May into the middle of August. Groping into the foliage to get at the weeds, she felt that the punishment of the sun was good for her constitution and the exercise vital to her health. Once she had flirted with the idea of yoga classes, but an image of herself in a bulging leotard had horrified her. She gave a start when her bare arm brushed a spiderweb and a bigger start when she heard a male voice behind her.
    “Excuse me, ma’am.”
    She was on her feet in the instant.
    “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said as she pressed a hand over her heart, for the moment conscious only of his bleached blue eyes and his yellow hair neatly combed and parted. “I rang the front bell,” he said, “but I guess you can’t hear it out here.”
    “The windows are closed,” she said, conscious now of her untidy appearance, especially of the sweat blotches on her blouse and the grass stains on her knees, though her knees could not be seen. “To keep the house cool,” she explained as he stepped closer with a polite smile. He had on a short-sleeved check shirt tucked tight into his jeans, and he smelled of a barbershop. In his hand was an envelope.
    “Then you didn’t hear the phone either. Someone was supposed to call you, tell you I was coming. You’re Mrs. Goss, right?”
    She nodded tentatively and removed her gloves, aware of a palpitation. She feared he was bearing bad news of a completely unexpected nature. Perhaps her payment to one of the utility companies had been lost in the mail and he was here to shut off the service … and all the neighbors would know.
    He said, “I work for Mr. Cole. He’s got something for you to sign. I don’t know what it’s about, but I guess you do.”
    She looked at him deadpan, for her mind had not yet moved ahead.
    “Something about your house,” he said helpfully, and gave her the envelope, which she opened with awkward fingers. Then, with a flood of relief, she saw that the document was a formal notification to the realtor that she no longer wanted to place her house on the market.
    “Yes, of course, I’ll sign it,” she said eagerly.
    They moved to the breezeway connecting the house and garage, where he produced a pen from the pocket of his new shirt. When she affixed her signature above her typewritten name, a wave of satisfaction passed through her, as if something vital had been restored. Tears formed in her eyes like a membrane over her emotions. She slipped the paper back into the envelope and returned it to him. Then, retracting the point, she gave back the pen and gazed at him with gratitude. She felt that in some way she should repay him.
    “Would you like some ice tea? I could bring you out a glass.”
    “Thank you just the same, ma’am, but I got more things to do for Mr. Cole. My first day on the job, I don’t want to mess up.” He raised an arm and pointed. “I go that way, it takes me to South Broadway, right?”
    “Yes,” she said, happy to provide direction, to steer him on course.
    “I’m still learning my way around. I’m new to Lawrence.” His smile was big. “You got a nice house here, Mrs. Goss, the kind you see in the nicer parts of Chicopee. That’s where I’m from. I’m Polish, you might’ve guessed.”
    She had not. She had thought Swedish. Birds clamored from high in a neighbor’s tree that she had watched grow from a sapling. “I’ve lived here a long time,” she said, and wondered how she could ever have considered moving.
    He said, “I heard Mr. Cole’s secretary mention you lost your husband not so long ago.”
    “Yes,” she said in