Luck of the Draw (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 1)(7)

Kate glanced toward Nana—who was rolling her eyes.

“When will you be picking her up?”

Her mother shrugged gracefully. “A few hours? Four at most. I’ll try not to linger.”

“Of course.”

“I have to use the little girls’ room before I go. Be back in a sec.” Kate’s mother’s kitten-heeled sandals made little schtuck, schtuck noises as she walked down the hall.

Liam pounded out a jar of Play-Doh onto the coffee table.

“There are times I cannot believe I gave birth to that woman,” Nana muttered from the other side of the room.

“Nana!”

“Oh, please. I think the chemicals she uses in her hair have done something to her good sense.”

Kate went back to picking up food debris. “She doesn’t use anything but the natural dyes now.”

“After thirty years of pickling her brain. But, she had you, so it’s clear the commonsense genes made it through before she did too much damage.”

Kate knew Nana was only trying to lift her spirits, but still. It hurt that a dog meant more to her mother than her own grandchild. Kate wondered if she had married one of the prep-school boys her parents approved of rather than the son of a factory worker whether Liam would be more acceptable in her parents’ eyes. She didn’t have time to dwell on the thought, as a shriek rang down the hall.

“Katherine! Come quick! There are feces on your bathroom floor!”

Kate met Nana’s eyes across the room. “Well, don’t look at me,” Nana said.

Kate hurried down the hall.

“There. On the rug. The corner was flipped over, and when I went to straighten it—you really should invest in those mats that stay in place—I found that!” Kate’s mother shivered and pointed in horror at the bathmat. “Who does that?” she cried.

Kate sighed and carefully picked up the mat to shake the offense into the toilet. “Ma, there were a dozen three and four year-olds here today. Obviously someone had an accident and didn’t know what to do about it.” She rolled up the mat. “There.”

Her mother looked at the toilet dubiously. “Do you have any sanitizing wipes? I think it’d be a good idea to touch up… surfaces.”

Kate pulled a package of wipes from under the sink and disinfected the sink, toilet handle and finally the toilet seat. Not that she could picture her mother actually sitting on the toilet seat. No doubt she’d hover like she’d always advised Kate to do in public restrooms. You never know who’s been there. “I’ll take this to the laundry.”

Kate returned to the living room where Liam was now busy chopping Play-Doh into tiny bits that were quickly adhering to the carpet fibers under his knees. “Pumpkin, can you bring your Play-Doh to the kitchen? Nana will give you cookie cutters to use with it.”

Nana ushered Liam toward the kitchen door and raised an eyebrow at the rolled bath mat. “Don’t ask,” said Kate.

Kate closed the laundry room door behind her, fighting back a bubble of hysterical laughter as she clutched the soiled bathmat in her hand. Good God. She unrolled the bathmat on top of the washer and stared at the little brown smudge in the corner, and suddenly… suddenly it seemed a commentary from the universe on the state of her whole life. Randy’s death. Nancy’s ultimatum. Ma’s stupid dog. It all distilled down to this one, simple fact.

Her life was a poo-stained bathmat.

Kate’s chest grew tight and her eyes blurred as she grabbed the pre-treater bottle off the shelf and aimed it at the smudge. She squirted blindly, blinking back tears. You’d think after all she’d cried over the last seven weeks, the source of them would have dried up already.

But they weren’t tears of grief. They were tears of panic.

Nancy’s words replayed in her head like a bad movie reel...

Go. Find out what’s next for Kate Mitchell. Find your passion.

Kate pushed away from the washer, the mini wieners roiling in her gut. Find her passion? How in hell was she supposed to find anything when she was barely making it through the day? And, furthermore, who in their right mind would be passionate about being a secretary in a private school?

Fine. Executive Assistant. Whatever.

Kate blew out a shaky breath and shoved the bathmat into the washer. Her gaze bounced around the cluttered room. How was she supposed to find her passion in the middle of this chaos? She’d meant to clean it. Truly. But then Randy had gone and died, and that was the end of that.

Except it wasn’t.

Her heart pounded as she closed the washer and fought against the small, nagging, paralyzing thought that had been poking at the edges of her sanity for days. She’d buried herself in preparations for Liam’s birthday, Nana’s visit, contacting the admissions office at the school, hoping against hope she would be saved from having to acknowledge the truth. But she couldn’t hide from it any longer.

Randy had been gone for seven weeks.

And she hadn’t gotten her period since.

She could barely breathe as her eyes fell on the small pile of clothes on the dryer. Randy’s clothes. She’d washed them and set them aside, had meant to return them to him. Now it was too late.

Her lips twisted as she picked up a T-shirt and rubbed the soft, faded fabric between her fingers. She concentrated on the sensation, trying to picture Randy in it, trying to remember how it felt with him beneath it, trying to remember how life felt before everything fell apart, but all she felt was... T-shirt.