We stopped in the circular drive in front of the building, and soon, our door was opened by our driver. I noted an older Asian man wearing a perfectly crisp white uniform waiting by the front door. He approached, a constant crinkle to the corners of his eyes. “Gentlemen. I’m Mr. Wei, program director. We are so pleased to have you here.”
I shook his hand, and Owen followed suit.
“Let me take you to Mr. Church’s room.”
I nodded curtly, ready to have this over with. I slept like shit on the plane, and I knew I wouldn’t rest until we had a way to thwart Simon’s plan.
I’d do whatever it took to protect MyHome. Because the guys who built it with me? They were the only family that mattered to me.
Mr. Wei led us over a cobblestone breezeway between what seemed to be the admin building and the residential area. A few of the rooms had open doors showing grand chambers with decadent furnishings and expansive views of the mountain range.
Forget rehab. This was a full-blown resort.
Mine and Owen’s dress shoes echoed off the cobbled floor until Mr. Wei stopped ahead of us. He lifted his hand to the knocker above Door 149 and sharply cracked metal over metal three times.
The sound drove right through my skull. But I didn’t wince. Didn’t move.
A moment later, Simon’s son, the younger, degenerate version of him, opened the door in a khaki-colored uniform similar to Mr. Wei’s. Stubble grew over his jawline, and his dirty-blond hair was tousled above his head. Yet his smile was cool and calculated; he’d been expecting to see me. How?
“So,” he drawled, “you heard my father’s dying.”
6.Jada
I putthe phone down on the receiver and dropped my head to the table in the small employee lounge, resting my forehead on the back of my hands. My eyes stung just as bad as my thumb ring stabbing into my eyebrow.
Nine hundred dollars a month for insurance with a four-figure deductible.
I couldn’t afford that—it was more than half my paycheck, which barely covered expenses now.
A soft knock sounded on the open door, and I straightened in my chair, sniffing back unshed tears. “Sorry,” I said, once I had regained my composure.
My boss, Esther, peeked her head in, blond curly hair barely tamed by a bejeweled headband. “Got a minute?”
“Sure,” I replied.
She came in, holding a stack of papers. She opened her mouth to speak and then seemed to think better of it. “Everything okay?”
I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m having trouble getting insurance I can afford.” Since this was a small center with just a fewemployees, she didn’t have to cover it for us. Probably wasn’t making enough money to cover it either.
Her expression fell even further. “The Marketplace didn’t work?” Most daycare employees used the online Marketplace set up by the state government to shop for health insurance plans, which is why I thought it would work for me.
Leaning back in my chair, I rubbed my throbbing temples. “It gave me options. I can choose between an ‘expensive’ option with a sky-high deductible and super high co-pays. Or the ‘arm and a leg’ option with a decent deductible and zero-dollar copays, but it costs nine hundred a month and my first-born child. I can’t afford it.” My eyes stung, but I blinked back the emotions. “I’ve just felt off for months now. Nausea, headaches, and I know it’s probably allergies or something to do with my endometriosis or blood sugar but I can’t get into a doctor to tell me what’s going on for sure.”
Her lips pinched, and in her leopard print romper, she looked kind of like a Furby doll. “I’m so sorry, Jada. Should we move to Canada?”
“I’m tempted,” I admitted. “But I could never move away from Glamma.”
“She’d lasso you with her pearls and drag you back home,” Esther agreed, humor squinting her eyes. She used to work with my grandma before getting a contract to operate this childcare center, which is why I got the job in the first place.
I shook my head and shrugged. “I’ll be okay. What’s up?”
She needed me to read through an additional training on incident reports and sign off on it. The material should have been a nice distraction, but I still felt the weight of a decision hanging over my head. Maybe I was just being a hypochondriac. After all, the doctors did my labs six months ago. Some markers were elevated, but it wasn’t like I wasdying. At least not yet. I could push it off for the day.
When I finished the training, I brought the completed papers to Esther’s desk. Then I returned to the infant room, trading places with the person who filled in for me on my lunch break. We had four babies in the room, anywhere from three months to eleven months old.
“Are they all ready for naps?” I asked my coworker, an older woman named Etta. The babies typically ate when I was on my break, and I did naptime when I came back.
“They are. And it’s quiet now,” Etta said. “Let’s see how long that lasts.”
