Free Father Knows Best by Lynda Sandoval Page B

if we kept having low sales and zero foot traffic, there was a distinct possibility Reese and Kelly might have to let me go. Not that they’d ever mentioned that, but we studied economics in school. I’m not blind to the realities of small business.
    I don’t know…maybe I was overreacting.
    Maybe I wasn’t.
    Maybe I needed to calm down. Meditate. Do a yoga pose, or have a little of that green tea extract myself.
    Still, I glanced out the front display window, silently willing customers to simply open the door. Was that so hard? The store is cozy and clean, filled with treasures. Once they come in, I guarantee I can sell them just about anything we stock. Sales, as it turns out, is one of my latent talents. I guess people tend to trust earnest, freckle-faced, redheaded nerd girls. Or maybe they can sense how much I believe in our products. I don’t know.
    The rain continued to pelt the street, turning everything a hazy gray. It pinged on the roof, steamed the front door. And no one came in. Dang.
    With a sigh, I picked up the ostrich feather duster intending to keep myself busy by making the shop sparkle. Anything’s better than sitting here fretting about the possibility of impending unemployment.
    I headed toward the display of crystals, and that’s when I saw her. Jennifer Hamilton.
    Again.
    She sat on that same park bench where I’d seen her the first time, the day she’d told me she was pregnant. Today, she sat hunched in an oversized gray hoodie she wouldn’t be caught dead in normally. But obviously nothing was normal in her world at the moment. She didn’t have on her usual full face of makeup, and her chunky blond highlights were growing out, exposing a wide alley of mousy brown straight up the middle of her head. Sopping wet at this point. She looked so not Jennifer. So alone, and it made me sad. Maybe she wanted some alone time, but come on. Out there? The rain was really was coming down.
    Ever have one of those internal struggle moments?
    Count me in, right then.
    A pang of that signature Meryl Morgenstern compassion made me forget that, oh yeah, she hated me and my best friends. I tucked the feather duster under one arm and bit my pinky nail, warring with myself over the whole convoluted situation. I didn’t know what to do. Fact: Jennifer Hamilton is Lila’s archenemy now that Lila and Dylan are an item. Not only that, but Jennifer has treated me like a leper since the first day of middle school for absolutely no reason other than the fact that I don’t fit her mold of someone “worthy.” I’d count that as fact number two.
    Still, she’s pregnant, friendless, and sitting outside in a chilly rainstorm hanging her head. Dejected. Lost.
    Moral dilemma.
    What was I to do? Turn away? Reach out? The whole thing was awful.
    Some might say her predicament is pure karma in action, that Jennifer deserves what’s befallen her for all the evil things she’s perpetrated over the years. Maybe so, but I just can’t buy into that kind of nanner-nanner meanness. I don’t believe in paybacks. What good do they do?
    It only took me a moment to get clear on my decision.
    “Reese?” I called toward the back as I set the duster aside and grabbed my rain jacket off of the coat rack adjacent to the door. Reese and her partner (in life and business) Kelly had started Inner Power together, and I loved them like second moms, even though they aren’t old enough to be my moms really.
    “Yeah, hon?” The familiar rhythm of the adding machine permeated the shop as background. Reese is old-fashioned when it comes to tallying up sales. So cool.
    “I’m going to run outside for a minute if that’s okay.”
    “It’s pouring, you know.”
    “I have a slicker,” I said. I crossed to the back of the shop and peeked my head into the office. “I’ll watch the front door. If any customers show up, I’ll follow them in so you don’t have to interrupt your work, okay?”
    She smiled. Her long dark hair was wound