“Only about a half hour away, but I try to leave extra time for the subway in case the train is late.”
“I can drive you. I’m parked up the block.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.” She shook her head.
“Why can’t you? I’m not just a client you’re interviewing. I’m a friend. Or I’d like to be.”
Friend wasn’t what I wanted to be to Rachel, but I’d gladly settle for it if it meant I could see her again. I didn’t have a lot of free time and neither did she, but what was the harm in talking?
Probably more than I wanted to consider, but I still wanted this piece of her, at least while she’d be lingering around the field over the next couple of months.
“Sure,” she said as her shoulders relaxed. “They have good ice cream here, and if you drive me, we’d have an extra half hour.”
“Good.” A smile ripped across my mouth. I’d take any extra time I could get. “How many different sports is your sister in?”
She dropped her chin to her chest.
“More than I can afford, but I haven’t figured out how to tell her no. Softball and swimming for right now. But sports are expensive, between the dues and the uniforms and the equipment, plus the stress of making sure I can leave work.” She pressed her fingers into her temples.
“It’s a lot?”
“Yes,” she said as she dropped her head onto the table with a thump. “I try to overcompensate for our mother and give her all the stuff I didn’t get growing up.”
“Can you ask her to choose?”
She shrugged. “She likes softball better, but she has friends in both. We have to have a hard conversation very soon, but I keep putting it off, thinking four extra hours a day or five hundred dollars are magically going to appear out of nowhere.”
“You can’t help her if you exhaust yourself.”
“I’ll figure it out. I’ve come this far. A lot further than anyone expected,” she mumbled to herself.
“But what happens to you?”
Her head jerked up. “What do you mean, what happens to me?”
“What happens when you wear yourself out and make yourself sick? Days off for yourself shouldn’t be so rare.”
“My downstairs tenant helps us out. She was a friend of my grandmother’s. She’d watch Taylor when she was little and if Ihad to work, and she keeps an eye on her for me when she’s home alone, which I try not to let happen very often or for too long. Since this guardianship came through, she’s been a little antsy.”
“Why? Didn’t you say you’ve been taking care of her from the beginning?”
“Pretty much, but our mother would breeze in and out. If she needed a place to stay for a night or two or had to use the bathroom while she was out.” She snickered. “My sister would look for her, until one day she stopped. And she would only get sad and quiet when our mother would pop back into our lives.”
“So, you never knew when you’d see her again?”
My mother had doted on both of us, despite what my brother had always claimed. I couldn’t imagine never knowing when I’d see my parents and having to take care of a younger sibling too.
“When I mentioned that it was getting a little dicey signing my mother’s name on Taylor’s school forms, my mother suggested handing over her rights to me and said, with my sister in earshot, if it got to be too much, I could always just put her in the system.”
“Jesus,” I spat out.
“Yep, and I would never let that happen. Taylor knows that, but when I made a joke about the truant officers coming to take me away if I let her stay home from school this morning, she got upset and I felt like shit. And I again went back to my bank account and schedule to see if she could keep both sports.”
“Can I say something?” I set my elbows on the table and leaned in. “Since we’re friends and all.”
A tiny smile danced over her mouth as she nodded.
“Sure.”
