Mom: Good morning sweetheart! Just checking in. Did you think about what I said?
I did think about it. I thought about it while staring at the ceiling at two a.m., stomach churning with the particular brand of rage and hurt that only your mother can inspire.
What she said was that I should give Jack another chance. That marriage is hard work. That he seemed so devastated when she talked to him last week, and surely I was being too harsh.
Too harsh. After years of being erased piece by piece until I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror.
I type back: Morning Mom. Busy getting Lily ready. Talk later.
I won't talk later. She knows it. I know it. But we maintain the fiction because that's what we do.
"Who's that?" Lily asks, not looking up from her rabbit arrangement.
"Grandma saying good morning."
"Oh." A pause. "Is Grandma coming over?"
"Not today, baby."
Relief flickers across her face. She's four. She shouldn't be relieved that her grandmother isn't visiting.
But Lily picks up on things. Kids are sponges for emotional temperature, and mine has been soaking up the wrong lessons for too long.
I never say his name in front of her. Never talk about the divorce. Not that it's finalized, because he keeps stalling the paperwork. To Lily, Daddy is just... not here anymore. And that's okay. That has to be okay.
The toast pops up. Golden brown this time. Small victories.
I spread peanut butter in careful strokes, cutting off the crusts because she hates them, arranging the triangles on her favorite plate. The one with the dancing elephants. Another Goodwill find. Our whole life is secondhand, but at least it's ours.
"Here you go, baby girl."
She takes a bite and grins at me, peanut butter already smearing her chin. My heart cracks open a little. The good kind of crack. The kind that lets light in instead of darkness.
I sit across from her with my own breakfast. Black coffee and the toast crusts she rejected. Protein would be nice, but the grocery budget doesn't stretch that far until Friday.
My phone buzzes again. Different number this time.
Automated Payment Reminder: Your monthly payment of $1,500 is due in 3 days.
The peanut butter toast turns to sawdust in my mouth.
Eighty-seven thousand dollars. That number haunts my dreams. It follows me through every shift, every tip counted, every coupon clipped. The debt was supposed to be for Lily's surgery when she was eight months old. A heart defect that needed immediate correction. Jack handled the paperwork because I was too terrified, too exhausted, too focused on keeping my baby alive to read the fine print.
Stupid. So stupid.
I shove the phone face-down on the table. The payment comes out automatically now. Fifteen hundred dollars that eats through my bank account like acid every month. Leaves me scrambling for the rest.
"Mommy, you're making the face."
I blink. "What face?"
"The sad face." Lily tilts her head, studying me with those gray-blue eyes that mirror my own. "Your mouth goes like this." She demonstrates, pressing her lips into a thin line.
God. She's too observant. Too tuned into my moods.
I force my expression to soften. "Just thinking about boring grown-up stuff, baby girl. Nothing for you to worry about."
She accepts this with a nod and returns to her toast. Sir Floppington gets a bite too, which means I'll be washing peanut butter out of fake fur later.
