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I wonder if Rae even remembers her mom. She was so young when we lost her.
I retreat back out into the hall and pull the door shut silently behind me. Then I step down and slowly push open Josh’s.
I frown. His bed is empty, the sheets smoothed over and tucked in neatly at the edges. He does that himself every morning without fail, though no one has ever actually asked him to, as far as I’m aware. But if he’s not in bed, where is…?
Ah.I glance over to see him with his face pressed against the desk. He’s out cold, his hands still fiddling with something in his lap. I’m confused about what it is until I walk over and pull the bundle out from under him.
When I do, my heart breaks.
It’s his basketball shoes. They were in rough shape when we got them from the thrift store, but now, they’re straight-up ruined. There are gaping holes on either sole, with wads of paper towels and duct tape fashioned into some kind of stopgap. He must’ve been trying to fix the damage when he fell asleep.
A tear leaks down my cheek. Since he came to me, he’s never done one single, solitary thing for himself. Everything he does is for his sisters. He makes Reagan eat her vegetables and he helps Caroline paint her nails. He does his choresandtheirs. He checks their homework. He’s eight years old and he’s the last thing holding this broken family together.
So when he shyly admitted to me that he wanted to play basketball this year, I wanted so badly to make that happen for him.
But the money just couldn’t work.
Ruslan pays me well, but New York City is expensive and New York City with three growing children (plus one adult-sized baby drinking all the beer) is even more expensive than that. Money just seems to disappear, leaking out through a million different holes. Clothes for school, utilities, rent, and this and that and the other.
Here one second. Gone the next.
Josh knows that. I don’t even have to ask to guess that’s why he was trying to fix his shoes himself instead of asking me to buy him a new pair.
I sink to the floor with my back against the wall and burst into tears. I do it silently because I don’t want to wake him, but the sobs come from somewhere deep, deep down.
I hate how ashamed I am of these tears. Why should I be? If anyone has a reason to cry, it’s me. My boss is an arrogant asshole and my sister is dead and her husband is more of a burden than a help and I have three innocent kids I’m doing my best to raise right but I can’t seem to catch a break and I need sleep and food and more coffee and a vacation and a fresh start and—the list just goes on. One reason for each of my thousand tears.
It’s only when they start to dry up that I force myself to think optimistically.What would Sienna say?I wonder.She can’t answer, of course, but I have some guesses.
Things will get better. They have to.
They sure as hell can’t get any worse.
2
EMMA
“Auntie Em! Auntie Em, wake up.”
I come to with a start. The sun is slanting in through the blinds and I have absolutely no freaking idea what planet I’m on. I feel a sharp line of pain on my cheek. It takes me a long moment to realize that it’s because I have a shoelace plastered to my skin. I peel it off with a wince and look up to see Josh standing over me.
“Auntie Em, it’s 7:45. We’re late for school.”
“Shit!”
I leap to my feet—and promptly fall right back on my ass, because my legs are completely numb from sleeping in such a weird fetal position, curled up at the foot of Josh’s desk like a dead cockroach.
The next fifteen minutes are a blur. I get the girls up and dressed in the least coordinated outfits in the history of shitty parenting. I hurl random food into their lunchboxes with no regard for nutritional value. And then we’re all sprinting out the door.
Ben, needless to say, doesn’t so much as lift a finger to help.
I get the evil eye from the receptionist at the kids’ school when I drop them off well into first period, but she can shove her judgment up her ass. I just pop a kiss on each of their foreheads and then turn to haul ass to Bane.
I get another evil eye from the lobby receptionist there, too, but I don’t quite realize why until I’m in the elevator up to the thirtieth floor and I catch sight of my reflection in the polished bronze.
I look like an absolute shitshow. My hair is a rat’s nest on my head and my blouse is on backwards. The fashionable one-shoulder cutout is framing my frayed bra strap instead of a tasteful slice of bare arm.
Wet street dogs are more put-together than I am.
