Oakley had a nest egg now that the divorce was finally over and done with, but she still felt anxious. She wanted to invest that money and watch it grow.
Instead she was watching it waste away, month after month, siphoned out of her account by her overpriced rent and her ever-hungry gas tank.
Even food was expensive.
One easy privilege throughout her life with Trent was that they had never hesitated to spend money on the best groceries that they could find; health was paramount, after all. But these days, with her spending far outstripping the money that was coming in, she had started actually paying attention to the price of groceries.
The two bags they had picked up in town that day cost nearly two hundred dollars.
The way that things were going, she didn’t know how she would ever get ahead. She wasn’t even sure how she would be able to break even. She didn’t know how to bring her monthly income up to compensate for what was rushing out of her bank account each month.
As Oakley carried their groceries into the kitchen, she wondered if the cost of gas spent driving to Costco would be more or less than what she might save on groceries. She could give the girls a Kona beach day to make the drive worth it.
“Pull your workbooks out,” she told them as she put the milkand cheese in the fridge.
Her command was met with a double groan.
“You haven’t gotten any schoolwork done today. You each need to do at least two pages of math, and then we can start today’s science lesson.”
“But we just got home,” Harper whined.
Oakley chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment and then relented.
“You can start with reading.”
“Sweet!” Harper grabbed her current read off of the kitchen counter and threw herself onto the living room sofa.
A puff of musty air went up when she landed, and Oakley looked at the old heap of fabric with distaste. It came with the house, which had felt like a boon at the time, but now she wondered if it wasn’t the primary feature of the home responsible for that pervasive smell.
She made a mental note to find them a new one – but the prospect of looking over other moldy old sofas or paying through the nose for a new one made her wince.
Hayden sat at the table reading the latest book in a long series about dragons. Her girls were both avid readers, so at least that one aspect of their homeschool studies was never a fight. Between the library and Paradise Books, they never lacked reading material.
Oakley cut up some cheese and apples for a snack; she had learned from experience that their math workbooks were best tackled on full stomachs.
When she opened the cupboards to pull out a couple of plates, a faint green haze caught her eyes. She swiped one of her fingers across the back wall of the cupboard. It left a trail of white behind it and came away olive green.
“Ugh!” Hayden came up beside her and scrunched her face in disgust. “Whatisthat?”
“Mold,” Oakley said shortly.
“The same mold that ate your shoes?” Harper shouted from the living room.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Oakley looked at Hayden. “Grab that cutting board and move it to the table, would you? You two can have a snack while I clean.”
The girls read and munched on apples while Oakley set about taking every single thing out of the cupboards – luckily she had only acquired a few basics thus far – and piled them in the sink. Then she wiped away the mold and cleaned the inside of each cupboard thoroughly with a lemon-vinegar spray that she hoped would help deter the growth of any new mold for a while.
The sharp smell filled the air and stung her nose.
She redirected the girls to their math workbooks, and they complied with a minimum of griping and groaning. By the time she had washed and dried all of their cups and plates and bowls and put them back in the cupboards, the girls were done with math for the day.
“Ready to start on science?” she asked brightly.
Hayden rolled her eyes.
“Do we have to?” Harper asked.
“You like science,” Oakley reminded her.
