Random Acts of Kindness by Lisa Verge Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

that?”
    “First round is on me.” Nicole swiveled on one heel, taking some grudging pleasure in the small victory. “Now, how about we check out that museum?”
    In the museum, she stared at some paintings of boxcar graffiti art while Claire wandered about, chattering over the display cases. Jenna disappeared into the gift shop long enough to purchase another postcard. Now Jenna sat at one of the benches, her pen poised, pulling faces as she tried to choose her words. This would be the second postcard Jenna had written to her daughter today; she had purchased the last one at a gas station some miles over the Continental Divide.
    Not that Nicole was paying any attention to the difficulty Jenna was having communicating with her daughter. Nope, she wasn’t paying any attention to the fact that Jenna was refusing to answer her phone. And she certainly wasn’t dwelling on the fact that this morning while Jenna had been in the shower, Nicole had glimpsed on the face of Jenna’s smartphone an all-too-familiar application entitled myinstantCOACH.
    Who needs a real life coach when there’s an app for that?
    Then an image popped in her mind of Norman Bates knifing a blonde in a shower as Nicole heard that ringtone again.
    “Oh, look, there’s a second floor,” Nicole said, gliding away. “I’m going to see what’s up there.”
    She climbed the creaking stairs. She reminded herself that Pine Lake was at the end of this road trip. She imagined herself diving from the end of the pier into the soft waters of Bay Roberts, plunging deep into the dark green silence, burrowing as far as she could until she touched the powdery silt at the bottom of the lake. She imagined lingering there weightless, where the sounds of the outside world were muffled to nothing, lingering until her lungs screamed from the pressure.
    “Wow,” Claire said, coming up the stairs behind her, “my nephews would never leave this room.”
    Nicole rose up from her reverie. She found herself in a room with an elaborate elevated model railroad. Claire poked at a switch, and a train idling by a dusty shingled depot lurched into action. The train swept through papier-mâché hills and a copse of furry pines, past sheds that read Feed and Seed and side rails full of wooden boxcars.
    A mournful electric whistle filled the room. In that moment, Nicole was transported back to a Christmas when Noah was four years old. Lars, in a moment of fatherly exuberance, had bought a railroad set that he couldn’t wait until Christmas morning to set up. Noah had squealed and raced around the house in his excitement, knocking over the boxes of ornaments, bouncing off the walls in his exuberance, pausing only to hover by Lars to “help” assemble the pieces. On subsequent Christmases, Noah had taken over the task, learning the names of each piece, jealously guarding the sections from the curiosity of his brother, Christian, and, later, his sister, Julia, assembling the ever-growing set in precise order and with frightening efficiency. She’d been so proud of his skills, so happy he’d found a passion. She imagined him as a future engineer.
    Now she remembered that volcanic enthusiasm and wondered if that was just another sign that she’d missed.
    “This is unbelievable.” Jenna emerged at the top of the stairs, her face buried in a Cheyenne penny saver. “I could afford to buy thirty acres of land outside of Cheyenne for half my current mortgage.”
    “Jenna.” Nicole pressed her teeth together but not quick enough to stop the question. “Are you ever going to answer that phone?”
    Jenna lifted her head, dazed, then she fumbled in her purse to flick the phone onto vibrate. “Sorry about that. I was keeping tally of the rings.”
    “Three times,” Nicole said. “In about fifteen minutes.”
    “Actually,” Jenna said, glancing at the face of her phone, “it’s been about seven times in the last hour.”
    Don’t ask. Don’t ask. “Are you sure there isn’t