With resignation, I thank her and slide the cash into the envelope with my paycheck, fully intending to hand it right back to her once I’m healed.
I trail her through the kitchen and back out into the dining area. She leaves me at the service area to check on her tables, and I wander over toward my parents, throwing a hello to several regulars on my way. When they ask why I’m not working—because I haven’t missed a Saturday shift in over two years, since Brenna was in the hospital with the flu—I simply hold up my bandaged hand and say, “I fell.”
Technically, I’m not lying.
Thankfully, the TV channel has been changed back to sports highlights, and the quiet buzz in the restaurant carries with it plenty of mundane conversations that have nothing to do with Brett Madden. Or me.
And the reporters sitting mere feet away, sipping their coffees and biding their time for a clue, aren’t the wiser.
Yet.
“I’ll open it!” Brenna snatches my keys from my hand and runs for the door with them, my mom trailing behind her.
“Make sure the key is all the way in before you turn it or you’ll snap it again!” I holler after her. The last time she tried to unlock the door, I had to fork over a hundred bucks for new locks.
“I know, Mom!” she exclaims with exasperation.
“Independent. Just like you were.” A soft smile takes over my dad’s face, as it always does when he’s watching Brenna.
“Thanks again for lunch, and for taking me to the hospital. I guess . . . I’ll talk to you later. I don’t know if I’ll be back at work next Saturday or not, so I’ll let you know about babysitting Brenna.” I turn to head for my front door.
“Hey, listen.” My dad clears his throat. “So have you decided what you’re going to do about a car?”
I groan. As much as I hate the idea of draining my savings, I know I have no choice but to face the inevitable. “I figured I’d call Keith to check out a few with me, so I don’t get hosed with a lemon.”
“Why don’t I come by tomorrow and take you into Belmont. We can get an idea of what’s out there. Just you and me,” he adds quickly. “Your mom can stay here and look after Brenna.”
“Really?” This is the most time I’ve spent with my parents—without the buffer of my siblings at Christmas—in years. “Are you sure you have time?”
He frowns. “Of course I’m sure. I’ll come by around noon. We’ll . . . we’ll figure this out.”
I don’t really know what that means, but it feels good to have his offer of help. “Yeah, okay. That’d be great. Thanks.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but hesitates. “It’s all going to work out. Things will be back to normal in no time.”
I force a smile.
If only I believed him.
Chapter 6
“When are you going to finish the attic?”
“When my wrist is better.”
“Oh, yeah.” Brenna’s big chocolate eyes slowly drift over the half-completed sketch before moving on to the next page, her small hands struggling with the size of the book. “Can we give Stella a doggy pool? I was thinking she might like that in the summer.”
I smile at my daughter, curled up in her sheets with her favorite stuffed dog beside her. “Yeah, I think she would, too. Right here?” I point to an empty spot on the left of the doghouse I drew for the husky Brenna wants so badly.
“Yeah. And maybe a tree over here, so she can have some shade.”
“That’s a great idea.”
With a wide yawn, Brenna pushes the scrapbook toward me. “When can we go and see the Gingerbread House again?”
“I don’t know. Right now you need to get some sleep.”
“Okay, Mommy.” She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes tight. “I hope your wrist feels better soon.”
“Me, too.” I shut off the lights and head for the kitchen to pour myself a tall, cold glass of SunnyD, my one and only true vice next to coffee. It’s juvenile and so unhealthy, but it reminds me of hot summer Saturday afternoons when Jack was just a baby and my dad was in charge of keeping my sister and me fed and watered. I suppose I’ll have to graduate to something more mature at some point.
For now, though, I wash my painkillers down with it.
Brenna’s bed creaks noisily as she flips back and forth, trying to settle. Another ten minutes or so and she’ll be asleep. As desperate as I am to turn on the news station, I don’t want her overhearing the reporters. She’s a smart kid with a short attention span, which is the only reason why she hasn’t already tied this terrible accident everyone’s talking about to me yet. But she still may put two and two together and make “Mommy’s the one who pulled the guy from the burning car” out of it. So far, everyone assumes it was a man who rescued Brett Madden, and that has kept them from making the connection to my “accident.” But as far as Brenna’s concerned, I’m superwoman and fully capable of such a feat.
So I wait for the creaking to stop, flipping through my sketchbook, studying the countless hours of work to kill time.
The only class I ever enjoyed—and excelled at—was art. Not just with Scott as my teacher, either. I was sketching from a young age. I’d draw the people around me, houses in the neighborhood, clothes. I loved to create. I never thought it could amount to a future for me. Not until Scott Philips started praising me and filling my ears with all kinds of ideas. Whispers of school where I could do this all day long, and how a few years of that could turn it into a career in fashion, or home design, or digital art . . . the sky was the limit for me in his eyes. I lapped it up, excited.
I stopped sketching after Scott Philips turned my world upside down. I didn’t so much as touch a pencil. I figured he’d been lying to me about all that, too.
Then, a year and a half ago, a loose real estate flyer landed on our doorstep. It was for a sprawling Victorian house down on Jasper Lane that I knew well. I’d fallen in love with it as a child on a cold winter day when my parents packed us into the backseat of their car and we toured the town, admiring the Christmas lights.
It was Christmas at that time again, and though Brenna was only four years old, I bundled her up and we drove down so I could see the place. It had a FOR SALE sign on it and they were hosting an open house.
I couldn’t help myself. We went inside.
It was everything I’d imagined, and more—with tall windows and detailed moldings, polished rosewood floors and delicate wallpaper. It was huge—three stories and enough space for ten people to live comfortably.
Brenna said it looked like a gingerbread house and asked if we could move there. I laughed and asked her what the two of us would do with such a giant house. She shrugged and said that we didn’t need to use all of it. We could let others borrow it if they needed a place to stay.
“What, like a little inn?” I asked.
Her face scrunched up. “Can you have a dog at an inn?”
“It’d be ours, so I guess we could do whatever we want.”
“Okay,” she said, a twinkle of excitement in her eyes. “Then let’s buy it and make it an inn.” So simple.