Her phone buzzed with a text. Tuesday’s image flashed on the screen, her sister’s full lips pressed in the ultimate duck face as she did that unsettling trick where she crossed only one eye. The message read: Good luck today! You’ve come a long way, baby.
Pepper grinned. Her sister was right. This courthouse was a far cry from her family’s sugar bush farm in Maine’s North Woods.
The sticky truth about the maple syrup business was that people didn’t get into it to increase their bank account balance. Yes, there’d always been food on the table (provided coupons were cut), (hand-me-down) clothes on her back, and a (sometimes leaky) roof overhead—although prohibitive heating oil costs meant huddling around a cast-iron stove during the winter months.
Dad boasted they were rich in love, but Mom’s parting words before leaving them behind for New Hampshire were tattooed on Pepper’s brain. “Whoever said money can’t buy happiness must have been poor, honey. Never ever forget that.”
And she never ever did.
Dad tried to put a positive spin on the situation: “From now on, girls, we’re a trio. Good thing three is my lucky number.” But there was no glossing over the fact that Mom had reinvented herself into a far-off Bedford suburb, remarrying a banker and becoming more invested in his stock portfolio than her two girls.
Pepper tried to be a de facto wife to Dad—cooking, cleaning, organizing appointments—and a surrogate mother to Tuesday—nagging her for homework, making lunches, styling her long blond hair before they hurried to catch the school bus.
The more Mom faded from their life, the more Pepper stepped in as Superwoman, self-appointed guardian of the family, and good thing, too. These days Dad was one bad sciatica attack away from being unable to handle the farm’s rigorous physical demands, and how long before Tuesday’s dreams of Broadway stardom dimmed? Her father and sister were reality escape artists, but someday they’d need her and her pragmatism. Pepper was the third little pig, busily building a sensible future.
Or do you need them to need you?
She lengthened her stride, walking faster than the whisper of doubt. At the end of the hall, Human Resources waited, promising the answers to her prayers. She let out a huge breath, the smallest trace of a smile settling on her lips.Almost there.A little routine paperwork and she’d carpe the heck out of this diem.
