I grimaced.
“I need you to come with me to pick up the girls from school.”
“Already? Did they have a half day?”
“No, they had a ‘we’re getting suspended day.’”
Enola and Anniewere sitting in the headmistress’s office when we walked in. Enola had an ice pack over her eye.
“Enola, did you get beat up?” I asked. I was ready to tie up my hair and throw hands.
“Ha!” she exclaimed. “You should see the other girl!”
The headmistress pursed her mouth.
“Enola attacked a girl, unprovoked, who was just trying to be friends.”
Beck shook his head. “I’m sure it was a misunderstanding.”
“Your sisters are suspended for another week, and I suggest you use the time to teach them how to behave in a civilized society. Unlike the cult where you grew up, we have standards here. Her victim’s parents are big donors to the school, and I assure you, they were not pleased when they had to pick their daughter up with a chunk of her hair missing.”
“I hate this school,” Enola said when we walked out to the car.
“Yeah, I’m not seeing the allure either,” I told her, pressing the ice pack to her head.
“At least we get to stay with you,” Annie said, grabbing Beck’s hand.
“I have a meeting.” He let out a breath. “You girls promised to try to fit in.”
“It’s not my fault. I hate that school,” Enola said vehemently.
“Can you please just tell me what happened?” Beck begged.
She didn’t answer, just climbed in the SUV and crossed her arms.
The whining started back up when we got back to the office.
“Can’t we stay with you?” the girls begged Beck.
“I have a meeting,” he reminded them gently but firmly. “You can do your schoolwork.”
“Already did it. I’ve gone through all the textbooks,” Enola said, scowling.
Beck looked to me for help.
“I’m sure Holly needs some assistants,” I said brightly, ushering the girls to the café.
During the lunch rush, I tried to catch up on my own work.
“I need to go deal with a delivery,” Holly said a few hours later. “Can you all man the counter while I’m gone? It’ll only be fifteen minutes.”
I let Enola and Annie be in charge. They knew how to work the complicated point-of-sale system better than I did. Though if they were going to be out of school for the foreseeable future, they couldn’t just spend all their time baking.
After all, look where nothing but baking had landed me. Even if Beck’s sisters wanted to start a baking empire, they needed business skills, marketing skills, and web-development skills.
My phone beeped with a message from my bank that my account was overdrawn again. I sighed. They definitely needed some finance skills.
Come to think of it, so did I. Not that I’d had the best role model. While I loved my mom, she hadn’t made the best decisions. She had been terrible with money, preferring to let her string of terrible boyfriends and then husbands manage it, or rather mismanage it.
