Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            He dialed the realty office, and some peon answered on the second ring, her voice way too chirpy for his taste. Blah, blah, blah—he held the phone away from his ear until she got to the important part: “How may I help you?”

            He might have unloaded some of his frustration on the poor receptionist, but whatever. Anyway, within minutes he was speaking with the agent who’d sold him this piece-of-shit property.

            “Delia,” he roared. “Were you aware…” He went off on her about how he’d gambled everything on his plan to flip this property and make a sorely needed profit. She knew all this already, but it felt good to vent.

            To her credit, she listened and said nothing but “Um-hmm, I hear you” until he’d worn himself out talking.

            He needed a win. Goddammit, he’d been doing nothing but losing for so long, he needed—no, he deserved—a win. “Look,” he finished. “I won’t be able to flip this estate—and you won’t be able to make the commission you’d been hoping for on the resale—unless we get rid of the petting zoo next door. What do you propose to do about this problem?”

            She talked for a while about zoning and variances and grandfathered permissions to keep livestock on land that had been annexed into the city of Magnolia Bay.

            “I don’t care about any of that.” He took another healthy swig of beer. “I just want you to fix the problem. Call City Hall. Circulate a petition. Do whatever you have to do. Just get that damn zoo gone. I have to be able to sell this place to a nice retired couple who can afford to buy it.”

            “Quinn, I’ve known you for almost a year.” Had sex with him a few times too. “And I know you don’t really mean what you’re saying right now. Can’t you just talk to your neighbor and work it out?”

            “You want me to go over there and say, ‘Pretty please, stop making your living the way you have been for the last decade or so?’ How well do you think that’ll go over?”

            Delia whined about the time and effort and red tape involved in rescinding grandfathered permissions to keep farm animals in the city limits.

            “I don’t care,” he said again. “You showed me this place on a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I’ll bet you scheduled the showing then for a reason.”

            “Aw, Quinn, come on. Stop being dramatic.”

            “Come on yourself, Delia. You never even answer your phone on the weekends. I should have known something was up when you couldn’t meet me here during the week.”

            She declined to respond to that one. “I guess you need to vent, Quinn, so go ahead. I’ll listen till you’re done.”

            “Your lack of candor has caused me a big problem, and you need to fix it.” If he couldn’t sell this place, the money he had squirreled away for renovations wouldn’t be worth a thin dime. “Tell you what. I’ll pay you a ten-thousand-dollar bonus when you sell this estate for double what I paid for it. That’s on top of your normal commission.” He paused for a minute to let that sink in. “And remember that other little property you told me about.” Quinn gazed out over the landscape where a hundred acres of marshland met the bay. “If and when it goes up for sale, we can both quadruple our profits. Now. Can you, or can you not, make the zoo next door go away?”

            He heard her take a breath, then let it out.

            “Well?” He took another pull at his beer, only to find that the bottle was empty.

            “I’ll do what I can,” she said. “If I can.”

            “Fine. I’ll trust you to handle it, for your benefit as well as mine.”

            “I will,” Delia answered. “I’ll handle it.”

            “Good. Keep me posted.” Now that he had vented, he felt much more relaxed and easygoing than he had a half hour before. He strolled into the pool house, dumped the empty bottle in the kitchen’s recycle bin, then went to wipe down the bathroom tiles.

            He hummed and scrubbed, clinging to his pie-in-the-sky vision of the retired couple who would enjoy their happily-ever-after lives in the dream home he was determined to create here.

            ***

            That evening, Abby dumped the day’s trash bags into the can by the road, thinking about the For Sale sign the motorcycle dude had discarded in the weeds in front of the neighboring estate. She had completely forgotten to tell Aunt Reva, and maybe that was a good thing, because Reva deserved at least a few days of bliss before hearing that the animal shelter she’d been campaigning for would never happen. Abby slammed the trash-can lid. “Oh well.”