Free Out of Bounds by Ellen Hartman Page B

requested no visitors and no calls. I can’t let you in.” Her cousin’s mouth twisted and she sighed. “It’s my job to help her set boundaries around her retreat.”
    Which Trish would know. She was using Maddy as a shield. “She knows I won’t get you in trouble. Can you deliver a note?”
    Maddy took a pen out of her back pocket. Posy flipped the note from her mom over and wrote:

    Dear Mom,
    I will pay the Fallons their money. Don’t tell anyone what you did. I suppose that won’t be difficult while you’re on your SILENT RETREAT. I would appreciate it if you could wrap your retreat up quickly so you can come home and help me deal with your house and Wonders.
    If you don’t, I’m selling everything.
    Love,
    Posy
    * * *
    W HEN P OSY DROVE BACK to her mom’s house, she kept the radio off. She wasn’t really crying, but for some reason, tears kept leaking down her cheeks. Every time one escaped, she rubbed it away with the heel of her hand, rubbing hard. She didn’t want this. Didn’t want any of it. Her mom’s mess was enough, but now she’d met a guy she really liked who was making her look deeper at herself—and her mother—than she was prepared to look.
    She opened the front door and waited for Angel to rush her. When the dog didn’t appear, Posy wondered if she was lying in ambush somewhere, ready to leap out from under a chair to attack her ankles or steal something else from her bag. But the dog still didn’t appear when she poured kibble into her bowl in the kitchen. She kicked the bowl a few times to make the food rattle, but no Angel.
    “I don’t like your poodle games, Angel!” she called. There was no answer from the silent house. No skittering of tiny toenails on the floor of the hall.
    She walked through the house and finally, in the laundry room, found a window where the screen had been pushed out from the inside. She pulled the curtain to the side.
    She was shocked to see Angel staring back at her from under a fern near the grill on the edge of the patio. She went back to the kitchen and opened the door to call Angel. The dog came out from under the plants, her head cocked to one side. Angel’s mixed heritage was most evident in her mismatched ears, one of which flopped neatly and obediently forward. The other ear stuck straight out to the side, the long fringes of fur flying from the edges giving it the appearance of a medieval battle flag.
    That one wild ear swiveled and Angel took a step toward Posy. She had a piece of shiny red fabric clutched in her teeth.
    “What in the name of heaven is that?”
    Posy stepped out onto the porch.
    The dog dropped the fabric, barked once and took off running through the Nickersons’ yard next door—her white fur glowing in the late-evening setting sun.
    Posy found a twig on the porch and used it to lift the fabric. It was a bra. Victoria’s Secret red satin with a clothespin still hanging from one strap.
    For half a second she considered trying to find the bra’s owner, but couldn’t face the thought. She slid it off the stick into the garbage can at the corner of the house.
    Her mom was in hiding. The dog was stealing lingerie. Posy was left holding down the ranch house.
    Perfect.
    * * *
    E ARLY THE NEXT MORNING , she sat at the counter in the kitchen and went over her own finances. She was a diligent saver, but unfortunately she’d just pumped almost all her money into a down payment on a condo in Rochester. The rest of her money was tied to her 401(k) account, which meant a penalty if she robbed it to pay the Fallons back. She did have a twenty-thousand-
dollar line of credit that she’d opened because she wanted to upgrade the kitchen in her new place. She could use that, plus a few thousand she had in her emergency savings and the three from Maddy.
    She called a dealer and set up an appointment for later that afternoon to get an estimate on the collections at her mom’s house. If he liked what he saw and he gave her any kind of