The Suite Spot (Beck Sisters #2)(67)

She strokes my cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know.” I blink hard, but the tears come anyway. “Thank you.”

“Why don’t you go have a nap in my room?” Mom suggests. “Maisie and I have some catching up to do.”

My life feels like it’s been rewound, my mom taking care of Maisie while I sleep. But I don’t want to be awake. I want to stop worrying about what might happen when we go to mediation. I want to stop missing Mason. I send him a text message to let him know we made it to Florida, then kick off my flip-flops, climb into bed, and escape into sleep.

I don’t wake up feeling better, but my exhaustion is gone, and that helps. I come out of the bedroom to find Maisie standing on a step stool at the counter, stirring batter in a bowl.

“Mama!” She’s visibly brighter than she’s been for the past three days. “We’re making pfannkuchen. That means pancakes for dinner.”

“Help her for a second,” Mom says. “I’ll be right back.”

I’m plugging in the griddle when she returns with a file folder in her hand.

“You might get mad at me for this, but I’ve been keeping a record of Brian’s visitations with Maisie,” she says, handing me the folder. “Whenever he was late picking her up or forgot her car seat or brought her home early to do something else, I wrote it down. Just in case.”

Inside the folder are four years’ worth of dates and times.

“You thought I was avoiding Brian because I didn’t like him,” she says. “And … okay, maybe I don’t like him very much, but whenever I disappeared, this is what I was doing.”

I laugh a little. “Six months ago we probably would have had a fight about this, but these notes could be helpful. Thank you.”

“I took the day off work tomorrow. I’ll watch Maisie while you meet with the lawyer.”

“I’m sorry for disrupting your life.”

“Egal,” she says. “You are my Maisie. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”



* * *



When I meet April Thomas at the law offices the following day, she’s wearing a yellow power pantsuit that pops against her dark skin, and her natural curls are touched with gray. She’s close to my mom’s age.

“From what I’ve gathered by talking with the Schroeder family’s attorney, Brian’s mother is the driving force behind this,” she says, gesturing toward a chair in her office. “Mrs. Schroeder is old-school—personally, I think she’s watched too many episodes of Law & Order—and believes the only way to make this official is to take it to court. Her attorney can’t budge her. But he tells me she’s been pushing Brian to be a responsible parent for years, so I get a sense that this is not really about you.”

“So Rosalie dragged me back to Florida to teach Brian a lesson? That sucks.”

“Well, you weren’t under any obligation to return, and if you had called a lawyer immediately, you would have known,” April says, and I wince a little inside as I remember how I pushed the idea away when Mason suggested it. “But it kind of works in our favor that you did. You have essentially been a single parent for the entirety of Maisie’s life, and you’ve put her well-being first. Quitting your job and returning to Florida is evidence of that. Despite cleaning up his act, Brian has not demonstrated that he is a competent parent.”

“Can’t they blame me for separating him from Maisie?”

“They can try, but you were within your right to move when you left,” she says. “Prior to that, Brian had nearly four years of opportunity, and what did he do with that time?”

I hand her the folder. “My mom kept records of what he did and didn’t do.”

She flips through the pages, nodding. “Mediation is your opportunity to work things out without going to trial, where a judge would make a decision for you. We can suggest alternating months. Or even alternating quarters, so you could move back to Ohio.”

“I don’t know how to be away from Maisie for months at a time.”

“Before we go to mediation, I’ll put together a few options,” she says. “The Schroeders are pushing for equal time-sharing and if they force us to trial, they might get it, but we can try to convince them otherwise.”

Back at my mom’s condo, I look for apartments online, but every place in my budget is in an unsafe neighborhood. Reviews complain of loud neighbors, theft from cars, and palmetto bugs, which is a fancy Florida name for cockroaches. I consider renting a more expensive apartment in a nicer neighborhood, but until I get a job, I can’t afford to burn through my savings.

“Stay here with me,” Mom says.

“There’s not enough room.”

“You and Maisie can have my bed, and I’ll take the sleeper sofa. I know it’s not a perfect situation, but this complex is safe, and I’ll be here to watch Maisie.”

I’m tired of crying, but I can’t stop the tears from coming. It feels like the past five months never happened. Back to sharing a room with my daughter. Back to relying on my mother for childcare. The only difference is that now her condo is even smaller than our old house. We’ll be living on top of each other.

I close all the apartment tabs on the computer, and I can understand how Anna spent so many months overwhelmed by grief. I can’t raise my daughter in an unsafe apartment, but I can’t stay here, either. I don’t know what to do, and I feel paralyzed by sadness. Instead of choosing an apartment, I open a bookmarked job finder website and enter in my search terms. I apply for all the management positions available—even if I’m underqualified—but most of the listings are for housekeepers. Even the Sunway Hotel is looking for a housekeeping supervisor. I apply for that job too.