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“I didn’t say smart. I said good,” her mom replied. “Sienna is a good girl who thinks of others first. She cares about other people, not just herself. You’ve always been a selfish girl who couldn’t be happy with what she had. Nothing was ever good enough for you. You had to have more. Sienna’s doing fine and has been for years. She doesn’t need anything from you. Not money or advice, and she definitelydoesn’t need a job that moves her into a world she doesn’t belong in. Nothing from you. If she needs something she can come to her momma because I won’t expect anything from her.”
“I did need her money when she had it.” Sienna stood at the bottom step, her eyes weary. “I didn’t tell you but after I divorced Donnie, I was dead broke. I told you Donnie paid the first and last month on this place, but it was Jayna, and she never asked me to pay her back. I told you both my exes were making their child support, but Donnie doesn’t have a job, and Austin sends about half of what he owes every other month. Jayna’s paid for a lot and now she can’t, so I’m scared about what happens if I get sick and can’t work a full week or if the tips are bad. At some point the bar I work at on weekends is going to find a permanent bartender and I’ll lose my shifts there. I walk on a knife’s edge, and if I lose fifty dollars of income a week I’ll get cut and so will my girls.”
Her mother’s shoulders straightened. “You should have told me. I would have handled it for you.”
“You can’t go and fight with my exes, and you don’t have the money to help out,” Sienna said with a weary sigh. “But you’re probably right. I wasn’t good at school in the first place.”
Jayna’s heart ached for her sister. “You weren’t bad at school. You are smart, Sienna. You can do this.”
Sienna wiped a tear away. “Yeah, well I’m not feeling like I can tonight. I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to Quaid tomorrow and let him know I need to think about it. And, Mom, Uncle Ron offered to help all the time. You were just too proud to take it.”
“Because he would have held it over my head to show me how much better he was,” her mother insisted.
“Or he actually just wanted to help. He was willing topay Jayna’s tuition to college and you turned him down,” Sienna said with a frown.
Jayna felt those words like a kick to her gut. “What?”
Her mom had flushed. “He wasn’t serious.”
“He was.” Sienna turned to Jayna. “I was there, and he was absolutely serious. He thought you were smart, and our cousins had already started to get into trouble by then. He said he knew his own kids weren’t going to go to college, so he might as well pay for the only kid in our family who would. He offered to pay for everything and Mom turned him down, told him if he ever said a word to you about it she wouldn’t see him again.”
“Sienna.” Her mom managed to make her name an accusation.
Sienna shrugged. “Well, you basically called me dumb and now I’m feeling mean. I’m going to bed.”
“Sienna,” her mom called out.
But Sienna kept walking until she disappeared inside her trailer, the door slamming behind her.
Jayna stood there, completely floored by what she’d just learned.
“I think you should go,” her mom said, her jaw so tight that every word ground out. “It was wrong for you to come back here. When you left, you left, and no matter what, you shouldn’t have come back to a place you hate so much.”
“I never said I hated it.” How could this be happening? How could her mom have turned down tuition? It wasn’t like she would have used the money to buy new clothes.
“You might not have said it out loud, but I got that message loud and clear.”
“I can’t believe you...” Why was she wasting her energy arguing? If she wasn’t welcome here, then she shouldn’t be here.
“Can’t believe I wouldn’t willingly send my daughter outin a world that I knew damn well would eat her up and spit her out?” Her mom moved up to the door, shaking her head. “No, I wasn’t going to make that easy on you. I wasn’t going to have my daughter taking money for pipe dreams.”
“I got my degree.” She wasn’t sure why she was even talking at this point. Luna sat beside her, her head tilted up. “I became a lawyer.”
“And now you’re fired and don’t have two nickels to rub together and you’re putting all kinds of ideas in Sienna’s head. You’re going to ruin her life and those kids lives, too. You need to go, Jayna. I can’t do this anymore. I’m tired and I can’t... can’t feel like I’m failing every minute of the day. That’s how you make me feel.” Her mother walked away.
Jayna followed her inside without saying another word, grabbed her overnight bag and her dog, and prayed her car kept working because it looked like she would be living in it for the time being.
•••
Quaid closed the door to the office as the rain started coming down. He stretched and looked around the space. Someone had cleaned up, and by someone he meant Jayna since she’d been the only one around. He’d rushed them both out of the office in his haste to make it to Rene’s in time for dinner before they played poker, so he hadn’t seen what she’d done.
She’d reshelved the books, every one of them in the proper place. She’d neatly stacked the files on Cindy’s desk, and it looked like she’d prepared the actual reception desk for her sister.
He should have thought of that, but he was deeply dependent on his support staff.
He’d turned into that guy—the one who could barely function without an assistant to do all the everyday chores.He didn’t even know how to use that crazy coffeemaker Cindy had bought.
He would bet Jayna wouldn’t bring him coffee in the morning. She’d barely talked to him all afternoon beyond telling him he was an asshole for giving her the LaMont brothers as clients. She’d spent two hours explaining to them that there was no way the parish fire marshal would sign off on a roller coaster made of used auto parts and some piping they found at the dump.
