“I just wanted the future to be okay. I thought I could fixeverything. For you and the cats. Forme. But I couldn’t.” I laughed harshly at my own overconfidence. “But you always talked about having an emergency fund, right?” I didn’t know how much was in it, just that Mom mentioned starting one years ago and saying it was important. I never brought it up before because I didn’t want to be the one to finally make her use it. But I guess that ship sailed. “You can use that, right?”
“Lucy,” Mom said carefully, her face going a shade paler. “We don’t have anything in the emergency fund anymore.”
The refrigerator could’ve chosen that moment to tip forward and squish me flat and it still would’ve been less shocking. “What?”
Mom took a deep breath. “I had to use it for my medical bills.”
“But don’t you have health insurance?” I asked, confused. “Aren’t they supposed to take care of us?”
“Our insurance has only been paying a percentage of the doctors’ visits,” Mom said quietly, looking crestfallen. “Between the surgery and the physical therapy I still need, there’s not enough money left to carry us through the low season like before.”
I felt sick, unable to breathe in a way that was not just my allergies. “Why didn’t you tell me things were that bad?”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry,” Mom said with a quiet sigh, echoing my exact words from a minute before.
We stared at each other a beat, realizing the irony.
“The money situation didn’t affect what you did in the café,” Mom explained. “You were already working as hard as you could. You didn’t need to have this burden when you already shouldn’t have had the responsibility of the café.”
Guilt seeped through me. Was she regretting trusting me? Did I endanger everything I was trying to protect?
Mom glanced down at her phone with a sigh. “Listen, we’ll talk about this later. I’ve got an appointment in twenty minutes to talk to the bank about a loan.”
A loan? Things werethatbad?
She looked over at me. “I took a look at our website since you were asleep and saw we got some bookings for this morning. We can’t afford to miss a chance at having a cat adopted out.” She shut her eyes for a moment and let out a deep breath through her mouth. “If we have to close, we’re going to need to get them in as many good homes as possible, as quickly as we can. The no-kill shelter here’s not going to be able to take them, since they’re already at full capacity.”
“Okay,” I answered instinctively.
Every thought I had about asking Mom if I could skip work today vanished from my mind. I didn’t care that my head throbbed and my throat was scratchy and my eyes burned. I needed to be there. I refused to be someone who dipped when things got hard.
I had some allergy medication I could take to get through it. I didn’t take it that often—my allergies normally weren’t bad enough for me to use it more than a couple times a year. But I was definitely glad I had it now; I didn’t know how else I’d get through the day.
“You’d better hurry,” Mom said, checking the time, and then she did a double take, leaning in closer to look at me. “Lucy? Hold on, are you—”
“I’m okay,” I interrupted her, going to my room.
If she realized I sounded stuffy from allergies and not fromcrying, she’d tell me to stay home today. But she had the meeting with the bank, and Amber couldn’t come in until the afternoon, so if I wasn’t there, we’d have to cancel the café bookings for the morning. I couldn’t let that happen. No matter how bad I felt, I had to be there in person to support her. If I wasn’t, how could Mom tell I really cared about what she was dealing with? That’s how you showed love for someone. That’s what made your love matter.
Wasn’t it?
It’s important that The Tiny Tiger’s open, I resolved, digging through the back of my drawer and pulling out the small box of prescription allergy tablets. I glanced down at the note on the side.Safe to be taken with or without food.
“Depending on how you react to these, you might want to have them with a snack,” my doctor had cautioned me. “It’s perfectly safe not to, it’s just that they can hit your system stronger on an empty stomach and everyone reacts differently.”
Hmm. Did I have time to grab breakfast?
A glance at the clock told me no.
Hurriedly, I knocked one back and rushed off to grab two matching shoes. I was running late as it was.
It’d be fine, right?
***
Was the toy mouse in Rumple’s room supposed to be multiplying like it could duplicate itself? I didn’t think so. I mean, it came in a pack that only cost three dollars and ninety-nine cents. Magic mice that could make a copy of themselves would beat leastfive dollars.
I squinted. Or maybe it was just one mouse and I was getting dizzier.
