As the shooter pulled out an embarrassingly small gun, they took off their mask.
“You!” Darcy shouted.
Another bullet hit her, and she tumbled backwards through the open window, the closing image on her life nothing but the soft glow of the LA sky at night.
Thursday, 7:13 a.m., 113 Avocado Avenue
ANerf bullet sailed across the kitchen and nailed Gabby Greene square in the back of the head.
She twirled around and aimed her spatula at her eight-year-old devil child. “Lucas Daniel Taylor, there are no guns at the breakfast table!”
How did that even need to be a rule?
“She started it!” Lucas pointed at Kyle, a fourteen-year-old replica of her mother, except with purple streaks in her brown hair and a sparkle in her eye that hadn’t yet dimmed.
“Just put the gun down and eat your pancakes. Okay?” How hard could that be? The shirt he’d just put on was already sticky with syrup.
A glance at the microwave clock—fifteen minutes until the bus arrived. Gabby ladled out another batch of the pancakes. There was something so comforting about a pancake—perfectly round and tan as a buckskin pony. Wanting kids as an adult was a lot like wanting a pony as a child—you couldn’t know how much work they’d be until you got them home.
As she watched for bubbles in the pancake, Lucas yelled, “Ican’t find my socks.” It wasn’t his fault. Finding and wearing socks wasn’t part of his skill set yet.
“I got it.” But did she? Were there even matching socks in the house? It was amazing how quickly you could go from “Do matching socks matter?” to a full-blown existential crisis. As long as she could delay it until after the bus picked up the kids.
She turned up her audiobook, almost loud enough to drown out the kids’ arguing. Sloane Ellis was revolutionizing divorce and single parenting, at least according to everyone on daytime TV. Supposedly, she made divorce just as fun as Marie Kondo made organizing sock drawers.
Gabby handed Lucas two mismatched socks, one knee-high and rainbow striped, the other a white tube sock—the best she could come up with. Where all the socks went was currently the biggest mystery in her life. Her number one suspect: Mr. Bubbles, her bichon.
Kyle looked up from her phone and noticed Lucas slipping on the rainbow sock. “That’smysock!” She reached for him. Lucas feinted to the left and stuck out his tongue.
“It’s mine now. Mom gave it to me!” Lucas pulled the trigger, and a second Nerf bullet hit Kyle.
One hand on her hip and the other with a spatula, Gabby let them have it. She leveled her gaze at Lucas. “Lucas! No shooting your sister. No shooting at all! Give. Me. The. Gun.” Then, in her sternest mom voice, she barked, “And, Kylie, get ready for school and forget about your sock.”
“Don’t call me Kylie!”
“Oh, sorry, sweetie,” she apologized to the kid engaged in hand-to-hand combat over breakfast. Her daughter had gone from Kylie to Kyle last year. Gabby didn’t ask questions. If she wantedto drop an “i,” that was fine. “Kylie is so cutesy,” she had said. “What were you thinking, Mom?”
She should have gotten ponies.
The smell of burnt pancake hit her nose. Why had she made pancakes on a school morning?
Another glance at the clock: three minutes left.
If they missed the bus again… For a fraction of a second, she shut her eyes and imagined getting on the bus herself. It could take her away for once, just a quick trip, maybe to Las Vegas. She could see the Thunder from Down Under and let it all go for a weekend. Linda from down the street went away all the time. Gabby couldn’t decide whether to judge her and act superior or be jealous. She chose judgment because she didn’t have time or means to go to Vegas. But deep down she knew it wasn’t just the caffeine burning a hole through the lining of her stomach. It was jealousy.
“Kyle, Lucas, grab your bags. It’s time to go!”
Just as the clock ran out, they made it out the door, Gabby following behind, her arms full of confiscated items: a Nerf gun, an umbrella that Lucas liked to use as a sword, and a bag of Laffy Taffy that would wreck Kyle’s braces.
No please or thank you. Her kids had no respect. None. It was her own damn fault. She hadn’t demanded it, hadn’t felt she deserved it, the same reason she’d accepted shit from Phil for all those years. And he had been the one to leave.Him.After she had done everything except make the money. On the night he’d told her, she’d been washing her face and trying out some new cream that promised to erase the bags under her eyes. Phil had stood behind her. “Gabs, I’m leaving.”
“Where?” She’d glanced at her phone. It had been ten o’clock. She’d asked, “Are we out of ice cream?” because that’s all that shecould imagine. Turns out they were out of a lot more than Cherry Garcia, which she would never eat again, thank you very much.
“No. I’mleavingleaving.”
She had stopped rubbing the cream into her face and stared at his reflection in the mirror. He had been talking to the back of her head. Coward.
“Don’t worry, you can have the house. I’ll get an apartment closer to the office.”
