The Harbour...Chapter 32: "What's Wrong with Everyone Today?"
“Whaaaat?” She heard Maya mumble from the other side of the door.
“I was just checking on you. I wasn’t sure if you’d be up to going to scho...”
She was cut off in mid sentence when Maya swung the door open. Her hair was tangled, there was makeup smudged around her eyes, she was wearing the same clothes she had had on last night and a scowl on her face. Behind her, it looked as though her she had slept on top of her sheets.
“You woke me up to ask me if I wanted to sleep in?” She asked frowning.
Maya could be surly sometimes, usually when she didn’t get her own way, but there was a mean edge in her voice.
Before a shocked Carolyn could respond, she had moved past her toward the door of the bathroom she shared with Caitlin.
“I didn’t sleep well,” she said as she opened the bathroom room, shutting it very hard behind her, again before Carolyn could say anything.
“Did she just slam the door on me?” Carolyn asked herself, feeling her skin get warm.
She wanted to rap on that bathroom door and straighten out her daughter, but she checked herself. It had been a long, rough night. Maya was undoubtedly feeling guilty about her fight with Joel, and with no sleep was being testy. She took a deep breath and paused outside the door.
“Do you want breakfast now?” She asked through the door.
“No.” Maya’s voice came back sharply.
Carolyn frowned in annoyance.
“No, what?”
“No thank you mother!”
She hear the blast of water hitting the tiled shower stall. The conversation was over.
Carolyn’s shoulders sagged. She was exhausted. As much emotionally as physically.
Back in her room, she shed her jeans and T-shirt, tossing them onto a chair. Perhaps another hot shower would help.
As she was stepping into the bathroom, the intercom buzzed. She leaned around the doorframe and pressed the button mounted on the wall.
“Yes?”
Myrtle’s voice flowed through the speaker. “Mr. D’Angelo is here.”
Carolyn’s stomach flipped over. She hadn’t prepared what she was going to tell him. Even though her father had convinced her not to send him away, she was worried that when he heard what had happened last night, he would decide that she and her family were just too much trouble.
Her mind raced.
“Ask him to wait in my office, I’ll be right out.”
She showered quickly, and as she stepped out onto the bathmat a few minutes later she heard the sound of someone moving in her bedroom. She wrapped a towel around herself, and pulled the shower cap off her head, her hair tumbling to her shoulders.
As she walked through the curtains that hung in the doorway between her dressing room and bedroom, she saw Marco standing at the window, his back to her.
As she walked tentatively toward his, he spun around folding his arms across his chest. The expression on his face stopped her in her tracks. His eyes were narrowed.
