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“I’m definitely not.”
“I passed up another roommate.”
Ryan looked up from the desk. “And?”
“Now I’m stuck again.”
“You can’t phone the person and tell them the room is available? It just happened last night.”
She turned away, flushing again. “I guess I could do that.”
“Right. Do that, and if it doesn’t come to anything, I’ll give you money for the rest of the month.”
“That would help.”
“Okay, Tiffany, now that we’ve settled my debt, can we get back to work? We need to do a read-through of the script this morning.”
While Ryan worked in earnest, Lisa tried to move on from his call.
“I need to block his number,” she confessed to Daniela. “Why would he call me? Call your girlfriend.”
“He probably doesn’t want her to know he was moving in with a girl. And it’s amusing that her house was too messy for him.”
“Ryan is a creature of habit. You saw how he was around here. Get up, do breakfast, paint. Complain, make coffee, repeat through the day. At work, he’s an entirely different beast. He is his father’s son.”
“I don’t need to remind you he hated the commute,” Daniela said, winking at Nancy. “Once he stopped working, he never left the house unless under duress.”
“Well, I guess we’re seeing either a new version of Ryan or the old one reimagined. Time will tell. In the meantime, we don’t have to worry about him.”
Lisa took her coffee and disappeared into the back of the house, heading to the laundry room.
“What does shedoback there?” Nancy asked, pointing over her shoulder.
“She’s praying to Our Lady of Altagracia,” Daniela said, crossing herself.
Nancy nodded, palms pressed together.
Placing the cup of coffee on the dryer, Lisa slid onto the stool facing the picture of the Virgin Mary.
“Here I am, Saint Mary,” Lisa whispered. “I’m going to have a baby, but you probably already knew that. I regret telling Zach. He sure did a one-eighty in record time. Having someone to talk to was nice. But I guess you’re stuck with me now because there is no one else.”
“Mom?”
Opening her eyes, Lisa pushed the door open to find Megan standing there, her face flushed, tears in her eyes.
“Meg, how’d you get here? Did Fredericka walk you across the street?”
“No, Grandma did. I called her because you didn’t answer your phone.”
Lisa fumbled in the pocket of her sweatpants and didn’t find her phone. “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart. I must have left it in the kitchen. Why didn’t you call Daniela?”
“Mom, stop!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I got my period.”
Trying not to frown, Lisa used all her effort to keep her poker face in place, thinking,She’s only ten!
