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“Why aren’t you at school?” she asked, pretending to be the attentive mother she knew she wasn’t.
“I needed the day off.”
“You’re a senior in high school. What could you know about needing a day off?”
I ignored her dig. As if her life was so damn difficult. “Hire her.”
“What?”
“Grace. I want you to offer her a job. Say you think it’ll lighten Rosalie’s load or something. She can clean my room.”
“Your room?” she asked, waiting for the punchline.
“She just lost her dad, right?” I asked.
Her brows would’ve lifted had it not been for all the filler injected into her forehead. “Youwerelistening.”
“She probably needs something to help get her mind off that shit.”
“Mouth, Seren!” my mother reprimanded.
I rolled my eyes. Now wasn’t the time to start mothering me. I was eighteen. Not twelve.
“That’s a nice gesture. I think I will offer her a job,” she said before spinning back around to look at herself in the mirror.
Nice gesture?
She had no idea.
CHAPTER 4
Grace
“Grace?” my mother called.
I glanced up from the floor of my room where I was on my hands and knees searching under my bed. “Have you seen my ring?”
She was still in her uniform as she stepped into my doorway, looking exhausted. “When was the last time you had it on?”
“I took it off before I took a shower and put it on the nightstand. But now it’s not there.” I couldn’t lose that ring. It was the last gift my father had given me. “I don’t know where it went.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie. It’ll turn up.” She turned to walk away then stopped and looked back at me. “Maureen asked if you’d be interested in helping me out around here.”
“Helping you out?” I asked.
“Well, not for free. A part-time job. You were saying a few weeks ago that you wanted to start saving for Tampa,” she reminded me.
“What would I have to do?”
She laughed. “Whatever I don’t want to do.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sounds like a dream.”
“Come on. It won’t be too bad. I’m a great boss.”
I smiled, feeling for the first time since my dad died that I could actually smile with my mom again and mean it. “Yeah. Okay.”
* * *
