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“I don’t think they’re stupid,” I told her firmly. “I think they’re very hip.”
“They were. Like two years ago.”
It wasn’t just the fashion that was outdated, then. If she wasn’t having her eyes checked every year…
The healthcare debate in America definitely bummed me out. People should be able to afford medical care. But since I didn’t really have a problem affording anything, it had been easy to be outraged in the abstract. Now, hearing that my sister couldn’t afford new glasses every year, even though she had a disease that affected her eyes, made me indescribably furious. I wasn’t going to just write to my representatives. I was going to start buying off politicians.
We got out of the car and headed for the doors. I stopped her just outside of them. “Okay, so here’s the deal. You can have anything you want.”
Her eyes lit up. “You don’t mean ‘anything’, right?”
“No, I mean it. Anything,” I promised. “Clothes, jewelry, makeup, anything you want. This is a shopping spree.” As if to prove it to her, I unsnapped my purse and fished out my black Centurion card. “Do you know what this is?”
She took it from me with trembling hands. “No. Shit.”
“No shit,” I confirmed, taking it back to tuck it safely away. “I want this thing to melt from overuse.”
She fixed me with a very serious stare. “I can do that.”
And wow. She totally could. We bopped away from the M.A.C. counter at Macy’s with every outrageous shade of lipstick and eyeshadow that they made—it briefly occurred to me that I should have asked Sasha if Molly was allowed to wear makeup, but it was too late at that point. Hot Topic turned into a free-for-all of fandom branded T-shirts and painfully short skirts—another area where I would have to beg Sasha for forgiveness. Molly shopped the way I would have if someone had told me to go no-limits berserk in a mall at her age. By the time we hit the Apple store for a rose gold MacBook Air and matching iPhone, I actually started to worry about Neil’s dollar limit.
“My arms hurt,” Molly complained as we trudged out with the laptop. For a computer that weighed practically nothing, the box sure was heavy.
“Hang on. You stay right there.” I pointed to some benches. “I’m going to enlist some help.”
A mall security guard passed by, and I flagged him down with my biggest, most flirty smile. “Hey there. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
He frowned suspiciously and nodded. I would have taken a five-hundred-dollar bet that he was in training to become a cop.
“Hi. We’re spending a vulgar amount of money here today,” I said, gesturing to Molly, surrounded by bags. “And it’s getting really hard to carry our purchases. Maybe there’s someone in the mall offices who’d be willing to help us out?”
I batted my eyelashes for effect.
Considering the proximity of the mall to some of the wealthiest suburbs in Michigan, it didn’t surprise me when he responded as though the request was routine and reasonable. “Let me radio down there and see what I can do.”
About fifteen minutes later, two very solicitous gentlemen in suits joined us to carry our purchases.
“This is the way you live all the time?” Molly asked in wonder.
“Not all the time. I actually don’t go shopping all that often.” I’d picked up a few things for myself from Nordstrom’s today, but nothing on the scale of Molly’s capitalist demolition.
“I would,” she said without hesitation. “I would go shopping like this every day.”
“I just don’t have the time. I’ve got my work, I’ve got Olivia—”
“That’s Neil’s granddaughter, right?” Molly asked, as though she were taking mental notes.
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s her. We didn’t bring her because—”
“Because you have a nanny?” she finished for me.
“Because she’s with her grandmother.” I didn’t want to give Molly the impression that we habitually abandoned Olivia just because we could. “We do have a nanny, but I like to be able to be home to spend time with Olivia. I don’t think it’s good for a kid to grow up without spending time with the people who love them.”
She went quiet and thoughtful for a moment. “I guess you would know about that. Because of Dad.”
I didn’t want to ruminate on the subject, because it appeared to bother her. Molly deserved to still think of her dad as the loving, kind man who’d raised her, even though he hadn’t done the same for me. It was difficult enough watching Susan struggle with all of this, and she was almost ten years older.
“Why don’t we go get something for your mom and for Susan?” I noticed a jeweler up ahead. “Do they like jewelry?”
“Mom doesn’t have much jewelry. Just her wedding ring. She sold pretty much everything else when we needed to buy this.” Molly tapped her hearing aid.
