mall charging purchases to the credit card she’d stolen from her mother’s purse. She’d felt completely justified because her mother had grounded her for some reason she couldn’t remember but at the time seemed grossly unfair.
Night had fallen when she finally returned home to find her father sitting in his favorite recliner with the TV off and the lights out. His voice had been steady when he told her he’d given up trying to track her down hours ago.
She remembered the fingernails of her right hand digging into her thigh as he went on to say her mother had collapsed that morning while waiting in line at the post office. She’d probably been dead before she hit the floor.
Following her father’s lead, Kaylee hadn’t cried. Neither had she told him her last words to her mother.
After the funeral, things had gone downhill fast. Without her mother around telling her what to do, Kaylee had done what she pleased. Within a month, she’d bagged her senior year and run off to Florida. Then she’d gotten pregnant.
A kind social worker had gotten Kaylee a bed in a home for unwed mothers run by a charitable organization that also helped her get her GED. If not for the stroke of fate that had landed Dawn in the same home, Kaylee would have made the biggest mistake of her life.
As the two girls had cried together over the children they’d never see grow up, somehow their tears had nourished their own emergence into adulthood. Then Dawn had come up with the radical, wonderful idea that they live together and help each other raise their babies.
And so they had, a situation that had worked out beautifully until Dawn had fallen in love. Kaylee owed Dawn more than she could ever repay so she’d tried to be happy for her. And she was. But that didn’t stop her from being sad for herself.
Not because Kaylee craved a man of her own—she’d learned the hard way that romantic entanglements could cause more problems than they solved—but because she’d lost her family.
Kaylee crossed the main room to the controls on the wall, turning the air conditioning up but only far enough that they wouldn’t break a sweat. She hoped.
She banished thoughts of Dawn, who she’d assured just yesterday over the phone that she was doing well, and concentrated on her greatest joy: her son.
She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat that the old memories had formed. She hadn’t truly recognized how badly she’d treated her own mother until she became a mother herself.
“What did you do in school today, Joe-Joe?”
In answer, the child knelt beside the backpack he’d dumped on the floor, opened it and took out a piece of paper.
Joey was a surprisingly good artist with a keen eye for the physical characteristics that made a person an individual. He’d drawn two people holding hands, and she clearly recognized them as herself and Joey.
“Miss Jan said to draw the people in my family,” he explained.
Kaylee forced herself to smile even though the starkness of the picture struck her. There was no Dawn, no Monica, no Aunt Lilly, no Grandpa Paul, no father—and no background. She and Joey existed in a vacuum against a backdrop of stark white. She searched for something positive to say.
“Is my little boy really this big already?” She tapped the picture he’d drawn of himself. His head was level with her shoulder, the size of a boy twice his age.
He rolled his eyes and affected a grown-up tone. “I’m already six years old.”
“Yes, you are.” She smiled tenderly, because he was growing up far too fast. “Mind if I put your picture up on the fridge?”
He shook his head, and she fastened the drawing to the refrigerator with a colorful magnet he’d painted in art class and given her for Mother’s Day. It joined a gallery that included a yellow dinosaur, a purple puppy and a mystery animal with the body of a dachshund and the head of an eagle.
“Can I turn on the TV?” Joey asked.
“Go ahead, honey. But just till dinner.”
Trying not to sigh, Kaylee took the pack of fish sticks from the freezer and popped eight of the frozen sticks into the oven. Then she set a pot of water to boil and found a box of macaroni and cheese in the lazy Susan.
Betty Crocker, she was not. But then she’d never paid attention when her mother tried to teach her to cook. She’d never even made a lunch to bring to school. Her mother had done that for her until high school, when she preferred to eat as little as possible and pocket the rest of the money for more important things. Like an occasional joint or the wine and beer she could talk an older friend into buying for her.
She dumped the macaroni into the boiling water, listening with half an ear to make sure the cartoon Joey had turned on wasn’t geared for adults.
The irony of her life of responsibility didn’t escape her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smoked a joint, and she barely touched alcohol. She, who’d reveled in the wrong things, was determined to set an example for her son by doing the right ones.
While she waited for the macaroni to cook, she separated her mail into two stacks. Bills in one, junk mail in another. She was almost through sorting when the phone rang.
“Kaylee, it’s Lilly.” Her younger sister’s drawling voice, rich with the sound of Texas, came over the line.
“Lilly!” Younger than Kaylee by six years, Lilly lived at home with their father while finishing her sophomore year at Houston Community College. “How’s college? Are you through with the semester yet?”
“Almost. It’s exam week, and I can’t wait for it to be over. Do you know how much you have to study in college?”
Kaylee barely stopped herself from lecturing her sister on the importance of a college education. Lilly was still young enough not to listen to reason, even if it came from somebody with first-hand knowledge of how hard it was to make ends meet without higher education. “What are you going to do this summer?”
“Same thing I do every summer. Work on my tan while lifeguarding at the community center,” she said. “Listen. I can’t talk long because I’m meeting a friend for dinner, but I wanted to let you know that Dad said you and Joey are welcome here.”
Kaylee’s jaw tensed. If her father really wanted her and Joey in his house, wouldn’t he have called her back himself? “Did he offer, Lilly? Or did you talk him into it?”
The pause at the other end of the line was too lengthy to be meaningless. “Don’t be silly, Kaylee. You know Dad. He’s always been there for us.”
Lilly’s statement wasn’t entirely accurate. Paul Carter was a dependable, hardworking plumber who’d ably supported the family. But he hadn’t cared enough to intercede in the stormy arguments Kaylee had with her mother. Neither had he come after Kaylee when she’d run away to Florida. And he still hadn’t seen his grandson.
To be fair, her father always sprang for Lilly’s plane ticket when her sister visited them. Lilly relayed that he’d pay for their plane tickets if Kaylee and Joey wanted to visit them in Houston, but Kaylee hadn’t asked and he hadn’t offered himself.
“Let
