Free A Measure of Happiness by Lorrie Thomson Page A

overtired hallucination. Hypnagogia. Lincoln, the brother closest in age to Celeste and with all the answers, had explained it to her. Another life lesson from the year of hell. Yet the sound tricked her every freaking time.
    Would she never learn?
    Rap, rap, rap.
    â€œWhat the—?” Celeste sat up, eyes wide. Her gaze shifted to the side. She was reasonably sure she was awake, so—
    Rap, rap, rap.
    She zipped up her hoodie till the slide nicked the skin at the base of her neck, and walked to the front door, stepping through the living room as though the furniture might reach out and take her out at the ankles. She angled her left eye to the peephole.
    Nothing out there but the front step and the curve of a wrought-iron railing leading to three more concrete steps just like it.
    Rap, rap, rap.
    This time, she could tell the knock echoed from the rental office next door.
    Was one of the tenants locked out from their place? Hurt? In need of assistance? When her brother Lincoln had been a volunteer firefighter, he’d responded to countless kitchen fires. The most popular culprit was usually a grilled cheese sandwich laid bare across the oven racks and a careless home cook who’d opened the oven door, feeding oxygen to the flames. People were their own worst enemies.
    Did she smell smoke?
    Celeste cracked open the door, slowly, slowly. But the stupid door creaked, igniting a heated tingle in her throat.
    The guy standing on the rental office’s artificial turf welcome mat, with his flannel shirt rattling in the wind, said exactly what Celeste was thinking. “No way!”
    Zach Fitzgerald—Lamontagne’s most recent, most curious employee—somehow managed to look both self-assured and sheepish, reminding Celeste of a stray cat she’d long ago found haunting her family’s doorstop. To her family’s credit, no one, not even her father—whose eyes swelled shut at the mention of cat —complained when they ran out of cream for their morning coffee or tuna for their brown-bag lunches.
    After Zach’s attempts to flirt with her that seemed more habit than heartfelt, he’d settled down. Celeste and Katherine had spent the rest of the morning and better part of the afternoon training Zach. Katherine showing Zach where to find the baker’s yeast, Zach piping up to ask Celeste where Katherine kept the toilet cleaner, and Celeste making sure Zach didn’t mistake one for the other.
    Unlike the first time Celeste had laid eyes on Zach, she grinned, as though returning a guy’s smile was her default reaction. Another one of her really bad habits. Or maybe she was relieved the knocking sound had come from someone real. She wrapped her arms around her waist, but the wind slipped like cold hands beneath her sweatshirt and T-shirt and across her belly. “Looking for anything special?”
    â€œThat depends.” Zach clambered down the rental office steps and bounded up the steps to her front door, his stray-cat look having morphed into a lost pup. Easily encouraged by a cheerful tone, too close, and with too much energy. “How much does a special apartment go for around here?”
    â€œFive hundred a month. Unfurnished.”
    â€œThat’s not too bad.”
    â€œThat doesn’t include utilities.”
    â€œOh.” His lips twisted to the side, considering. “Hmm.”
    â€œYou have to fork over first month, last month, and a security deposit. And sign a year lease.”
    â€œGeesh! What about your firstborn kid?”
    â€œThat would be illegal.”
    â€œGood point.” He gazed across the parking lot. “Looks like it’s another night in Matilda. Know a campground around here I can park her?”
    Celeste followed Zach’s gaze across the lot. An old lunch bag–brown four-door Volvo sedan was parked right next to Old Yeller. Celeste half-expected to see a woman stepping from Zach’s vehicle. Matilda