“But—”
I laid my palms on the table. “Please.”
I thought I heard her mutter something about puppy eyes and hashtags before she harrumphed. “Fine, but I need to know thatyouknow that I won’t lie to Chloe.”
If that’s all she was worried about, then things were settled. “Great. Perfect.”
“You say that, but this isn’t the first time my honesty has gotten me in trouble.”
I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor, no trouble from me.”
“And you want me to pick her up from preschool and watch her until you get home?”
“My shifts change both in length and times. Would it be too terribly difficult to be available…whenever?”Groan. I was basically asking her to forfeit a life so she could watch my daughter. “I’ll send you my schedules as soon as they’re posted and text any time something comes up and I end up stuck at the hospital because of a case.”
“I would be willing to make that work if you’re fine with me finishing up my online classes while I watched over Chloe.”
“Considering I brought her with me to a lot of my own classes, I don’t see how I could withhold that same pleasure from you.”
Miss Osbourne tapped her chin before extending her hand. “Dr. Ben, I think we have a deal.”
3
Molly
“Mocktails are ready,” a singsong voice called out as I stepped into my house. My roommate, Jocelyn, and I shared a single-family Spanish-style home typical of Southern California, complete with terracotta-colored tile shingle roof and stucco façade.
I placed my bag on the terracotta tile floor that matched the roof and let the front door shut behind me. Being Wednesday, all the girls would be here already, and if I’d had any doubts about that, the voice from the kitchen announcing drinks would have dispelled them.
We were a ragtag bunch, strays it seemed on some days, who’d knitted ourselves together over a hobby fit more for decades past than the fast-and-ready culture of our current society. But more than our mutual love of thread and needles and thimbles sewed our hearts together. We went the extra yard for each other. We kept each other’s seams from unraveling when life was shear madness. When one of us needled a little love, the rest of us were sew there.
Okay, I’ll stop with my sew-sew puns.
Betsy, whose voice should be on the radio instead of putting other musicians there, was in charge of refreshments for the evening. Who knew what concoction was in the blender she toted out of the kitchen?
Her gaze landed on me. “Oh, hey, Molly.” She jostled the blender and white slush rattled around inside. “You look like you’ve been through the wringer but have come out on the other side only slightly worse for wear.” She shrugged. “Good thing, because you know I don’t put anything stronger than pineapple juice and coconut milk in my drinks.”
None of us did. A regular bunch of teetotalers if we’d been around during the prohibition era. But now I knew the blended mix was virgin piña colada, and I was ready to get my hands on one. Who cared if I’d just downed two scoops of Horchata ice cream?
Betsy and I made our way into the living room. A heavy-duty Singer sewing machine sat atop an antique Singer pedal stand along one wall. The rest of the room consisted of a conglomeration of IKEA furniture from me and expensive boutique pieces from Jocelyn. The Persian rug that softened the coldness of the tile floor in the middle of the room certainly didnotcome from a Swedish warehouse store.
“Rough day?” Amanda asked from her perch on one end of the couch where she was running a pair of scissors along the thick, black line of a dress pattern.
I quickly highlighted the whole losing one job and gaining another in the span of an hour thing. Everyone made the appropriate objections to the first and notes of surprise and delight to the second. I purposefully left out the parts about Chloe’s dad being even more attractive than a certain television doctor and my hormones sitting up and paying attention to his stormy gray eyes and muscled physique.
I sucked down a large swallow of piña colada to cool my head, then eyed the group “Where’s Jocelyn?”
Nicole looked up from rummaging around in her gigantic bag made by rural women in Malawi. She’d given us each a bag as a Christmas present last year. A small way to combat environmental waste in the United States and poverty overseas by providing the women a sustainable income. The sentimental layer—that she’d given her own sewing group purses made by another sewing group—had not been lost on any of us. “She opened the door and said ‘hair day’ before closing herself in the bathroom.”
I commandeered the pitcher of piña colada from Betsy and filled four mason jars. If it was hair day then we wouldn’t see Jocelyn for at least another hour. The blended ice in the drinks would be melted by then.
Amanda laid down her scissors and picked up one of the jars. Nicole passed out paper straws that were one hundred percent compostable and eco-friendly. Betsy rolled her eyes as she accepted hers but didn’t object. Amanda took a sip, nodded in appreciation to Betsy, and then set her glass back down. “I don’t get it. I thought the excuse of having to wash one’s hair was just an old-fashioned way to get out of an unwanted date.”
Betsy snorted. “Gringa. You white women with your straight and silky hair don’t get it. Ethnic hair is a whole other thing altogether.” She lifted her hand and pulled on the elastic band holding her riot of curls together on the top of her head. A waterfall of spirals spilled around her shoulders. “This is not a wash and go, low-maintenance genetic blessing.”
I nodded, even though my own hair was both straight and silky like Betsy accused. “Jocelyn basically has to have a separate budget for hair products. She has more moisturizing products for her hair than we probably do collectively for our skin. If I don’t wash my hair every other day it gets super greasy and oily, but Jocelyn has to worry about hers drying out and getting brittle. And whereas it takes me about five minutes to wash and condition my hair, hers is so thick she has to shampoo in segments. And that’s just the washing. Then there’s the drying and styling.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “I had no idea.”
