“Bummer. Maybe I’ll stop by tomorrow to try my hand at vacuuming.”
“Duke.”
“Nora.”
“Go home.”
“After you.”
I still had all the trash to empty, but I didn’t want him to know that. “I’ve got to clean my…brushes.” I didn’t have any brushes that needed cleaning, besides maybe my toilet brushes, but I wasn’t about to get up close and personal with those. Cathy kept me in high supply with new toilet brushes. But the excuse sounded good. Before he could offer to help me, I snapped my fingers, holding out my hand for the squeegee and spray bottle. “I’ll see you later.”
He set down the cleaning supplies on the cart like they were weapons, giving me a salute before backing toward the doorway. “I’ll let you get back to your…book. Have a great night.”
I threw a dry sponge at him, enjoying the sound of his chuckle in spite of myself.
* * *
The next day,I wasn’t scheduled to work at the cafe and had some rare time off. I rolled out of bed at nine and made myself a luxurious breakfast of waffles from a boxed mix with fresh strawberries and half a can of whipped cream. The strawberries had been too soft for the cafe to use but not bad enough to be thrown away, so I had saved them from the trash can. Mira was sleeping after getting home from her night shift at the hospital, so I kept my noises down to a minimum.
Until my phone rang, and my shoulders sagged, the peaceful morning about to be obliterated.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, Nora Bora.” Her voice was muffled, swallowed by the background noise.
“Where are you?” I stood from my breakfast of half-eaten waffles and slipped out the front door so I didn’t wake Mira. The calm May morning greeting me was a direct contrast to my phone call.
“We’re at a karaoke bar in Florida. We spent all morning on the beach, but now we’re eating lunch.” My mom laughed and shouted at something. “Sorry, Kip just got up to sing. Go, babe!” she shouted into the phone.
I pulled the phone away from my ear.
After a few long moments of laughter and snippets of my mom’s conversation with other patrons at the bar, she remembered she had called me.
“Nora? You still there.”
“Mom, I’m going to hang up. Sounds like you’re having fun.”
“No! I need a favor real quick, sweetie. You know that storage unit I put all our stuff in before Kip and I got married? Anyway, I forgot to get that bill sent my way, so you probably have a stack of them on your counter. They just called me, and they put a lien on it. If we don’t pay in time, they’re going to auction off all our stuff. Can you believe that? But my credit card keeps declining. I think it must have gotten hacked. Anyway, would you mind paying that? I’ll have Kip send you some money.”
If I had a dime for every time my mother’s credit card had beenhacked, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I had indeed seen the bills that my mother had so kindly forwarded here when she took off on an RV road trip adventure a month ago with her new husband, Kip.
“Mom, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you out. I’m saving for college again.”
“But we’ll pay you back, sweetie. Some of your things are in there too. And Harper’s and Candice’s things. They’re going to sell it all if it’s not paid by the fifteenth.”
To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything tangible from my childhood that I was dying to save, but her mention of my sisters’ things gave me pause—and a sinking stomach. My three years in Fargo had imploded on me, but the one good thing that came out of it was the natural space carved between my mom and me. I had stopped paying part of her rent, though not long after I’d left, she began dating Kip. I guess that was a small blessing in disguise that Harper could finish out her senior year playing basketball and not working at the cafe to cover my mom. Kip had been there.
They had actually dated longer than any of the other men she’d married, but he hadn’t won me over yet, by any means. I thought about the meager eight hundred dollars I had saved from the cafe over the past couple months for tuition and wanted to cry at the thought of parting with any of it.
No.
I needed boundaries, or I would always be in the exact same place–forever my mom’s cushion.
“Mom, I really don’t have the money to pay it. You and Kip will have to figure it out. I’m sorry.”
She spoke faster, her voice a little desperate. “We’ll pay you back, sweetie. We’re just waiting for Kip to get his paycheck at the end of the week.”
There was a slight sway on my part before I held strong. I needed to let her fall.
