“Right, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel…”
I clicked on my blinker, listening to Jamie rattle off the rest of the books, trying not to chuckle at his pronunciation of Ecclesiastes. He’d been stressed out all morning about a math test he had, so to distract him, I’d challenged him to see if he could remember all of books of the Old Testament in chronological order.
His school had made him learn them back when he was in kindergarten, and I was honestly impressed that he still knew them. Although, truth be told, I didn’t know them so if he messed up, I wouldn’t know.
“See, told you I knew ’em.”
I darted a look over my shoulder, “Yeah, yeah. You know, the amount of random information you have stored in your brain is honestly alarming.” I barely remembered the details on a court case an hour after reading it, and here he was remembering useless names he’d memorized years ago.
Jamie was a student at a private Christian academy a few minutes across town, but not because we attended the church. We weren’t not religious; we just weren’t devout either. I’d been raised Catholic my entire childhood, but I hadn’t set foot in a church since graduating high school. The only reason he was enrolled there was because it was the best school in the area, bar none.
I remembered being ecstatic when Jamie had turned five and was finally old enough to start public school. I was beyond ready to save the hundreds I’d been spending on daycare each month, but the school district we’d lived in was in a shady part of town. And I don’t mean a little shady, I mean, at one point I’d received a phone call informing me a man with a gun had led police on a wild chase through the play yard.
No, thank you.
So, I’d registered him at the academy, paid the non-refundable enrollment fee, considered selling my left boob to afford it, and plopped his butt in private school. It was actually the main reason I worked the hours I did. The monthly tuition alone cost more than half my rent. But I couldn’t regret my choice.
I pulled into the lot, circling around to the front, mentally cheering when there wasn’t a long line in the car rider lane. “Good luck on your test, bud. I know you can do it, and no matter what, you’re awesome!”
“Thanks, Mom. Bye.” He snatched his bag and jumped out of our old, white Jeep, slamming the door behind him.
I immediately rolled down my passenger side window, “I love you!”
His shoulders scrunched around his ears, and he spun slowly to look at me, eyes wide, like I didn’t do this to him regularly. Muttering a quick, “Love you too,” he took off in a power walk that rivaled grandmas doing rounds at the mall.
I chuckled, not feeling at all guilty for the things I made my kid put up with. He wasn’t scared to throw it back at me. I switched off the orchestra music he’d been listening to and clicked aimlessly through stations before turning it off. I wasn’t a fan of morning shows, and it was nearly impossible to find a station playing only music this early in the day.
Luckily, it didn’t take me long to get to my weekday job. Living in a town of around 21,000 people had its perks. I didn’t desire the congestion and traffic of a larger city at all.
I parked next to my boss, taking a deep breath and holding it in for as long as I could before exhaling. I actually enjoyed this job a lot, and I loved Evaline, my boss, but desk jobs were difficult when you didn’t sleep much.
I grabbed my heels from behind the middle console, swapping out the flats I’d been wearing. Hopping out of the Jeep, I adjusted my black pencil skirt, pulling it down and making sure everything was covered and in place.
My white button-up blouse was a little wrinkled, but I could look worse. It was nearly impossible to keep my clothes from wrinkling when I had to travel to do laundry and didn’t own an iron. Evaline was used to it.
I worked for the security side of a sister company business. One side handled security, private investigations, and running background checks, while the other side handled home and business alarms. Our side happened to be in the middle of renovations, so I’d been having to use the alarm side’s door. And I hated it.