The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(13)

That was something my mom would do.

That was something my mom had done.

Countless times, she’d taken me and Eliza out in the snow, or the rain, and we’d accept God’s offering, His simple gifts of pure beauty just as they were meant to be.

I opened my mouth.

Brooks giggled.

I felt a flake melt on my tongue, and having taken my offering, I closed my mouth and looked at my boy.

“Mama,” he said.

I hoped I never forgot that.

I had hoped it every time I got it from the first time.

That trace.

My thirteen-month-old baby boy saying my name.

“Yes, baby, isn’t the snow gorgeous?” I let him go with one arm and pointed up to the sky. “Look, Brooks. There’s nothing like snow in the moonlight.”

He didn’t look.

He pitched down, reached his arms out and called, “Dada.”

He wanted to play with Dapper Dan.

Okay.

If that’s what Brooklyn wanted, that was what he was going to get.

So I took him inside, unwrapped him, put him on the floor in the family room, went back to the hall, unwrapped myself, locked the door and went back to the family room to hang with my kid and my dog for a few minutes before bath time.



“We’ll be there, what do you want us to bring?” Deanna asked.

It was an hour and a half later.

Brooklyn was asleep in his crib upstairs.

I was in the little laundry room downstairs, moving laundry from washer to dryer, with Dapper Dan doing his bit by snoozing flat out on his side with his head hidden under the open dryer door.

Since it was the week after Thanksgiving, earlier I’d texted the group string, that group being the Usual Suspects, with an invite for Sunday to come over and decorate for Christmas.

The Usual Suspects, by the way, included my sister Eliza (or Izzy), her man Johnny, her friends who were my friends too, Deanna and her husband Charlie, Johnny’s people (the man and woman who helped raise him and his brother Toby when their mom took off), Margot and Dave . . .

And Toby.

Even if I wanted to (and I wanted to), I could not let pride stand in the way of Deanna’s offering, or the ones that had also come via text from Margot and Izzy.

I could not put on a spread for my peeps after I invited them over to start the year’s holiday cheer.

I couldn’t afford it.

I was living in Izzy’s house and paying her mortgage now that she was moved in with Johnny at the mill.

Izzy made way more than me and could afford that mortgage.

It was crippling me.

I did not share this with my sister.

It probably wouldn’t be so bad if Brooks’s daycare wasn’t so much. But there was one whole daycare center in Matlock. It was clean and fun and nice and the staff was awesome. He loved it there.

But the bottom line was, I had no choice. I had to work and someone had to look after my kid when I did.

It also probably wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t owe Johnny for the attorney’s fees he’d paid so I could get my divorce.

But I did, and I didn’t share with him either that even the very low monthly payment we’d set for me to pay it back was breaking me.

And it probably wouldn’t be so bad if Perry, my ex-husband, paid the child support the court had ordered him to pay.

That support wasn’t so much. It certainly wasn’t totally crippling.

Though for Perry, who had an aversion to working, it was.

But it would help. It’d pay the utilities, car payment and insurance and some food.

That would leave me with mortgage, clothes, gas, internet, daycare and the rest of the food.

But at least I wouldn’t have to worry about heat, water, sewage, trash collection, electricity and God forbid, if something happened to my car.

I had no idea what Perry was doing. If he was working. Actually anything about him.

What I knew was he didn’t send child support and he didn’t show the one weekend a month he got to see Brooks. He’d done both for a couple of months after the decree was finalized, and then nothing.

What I also knew was how to handle this.

Throughout my life, my mom had shown me the way.

I had internet, but I didn’t have cable because I didn’t have time to watch TV and anyway, TV was a luxury. I also didn’t have a house phone because I had a cell phone and I didn’t need two phones. I jacked the heat down when we weren’t in the house. I did not have lights on in any room but the one we were in. I did not do laundry unless I had a full load. I clipped coupons. I bought off-brand, discounted and in bulk when I could. I took overtime when it was offered, any time it was offered, no matter if I had to do it when the daycare was closed and lean on Izzy, Margot, sometimes Deanna, and even Toby on occasion to look after my baby while I worked. I got mine and Brooks’s clothes at garage sales.

I did not buy myself fancy coffees.

I did not stream movies.

I did not download music.

And when summer rolled around again, I’d plant a garden to get my veggies and herbs, and the ones we didn’t eat, I’d can and dry those mothers to help me get through the winter.

Daphne Forrester, my bodacious mom, the goddess of everything, had shown me the way.

We’d lived that every day since she saved the three of us from my dad when we were little.