Naomi
Waylay and I had survived nearly an entire week together. It felt like a monumental accomplishment as our lives continued to hang in limbo. There had been no contact from the court system or Child Protective Services yet.
But I’d ground up zucchini and green beans into last night’s meatloaf to sneak past Waylay Witt’s discerning nose just in case anyone was watching.
I’d worked two more bar shifts, and the tips were starting to add up. Another financial boon was the arrival of my new credit and debit cards that I got in the mail. I hadn’t gotten all of Tina’s charges erased from my credit card statement, but having access to my meager savings had helped immensely.
I’d had the foresight to pay the mortgage early this month in anticipation of being too deliriously happy on my honeymoon to worry about things like bills. That plus the fact that I no longer had a car payment or insurance to cover meant I could stretch a dollar surprisingly far.
To earn that free rent, I carved out a few hours to spend at Liza’s.
“Who’s that?” Waylay asked, pointing at a framed photo I’d found tucked into the back of one of the cabinets in the dining room.
I looked up from my dust rag and furniture polish to look. It was a picture of an older man looking proud enough to burst with his arm around a beaming redhead in a cap and gown.
Liza, who had said repeatedly she didn’t like cleaning but still insisted on following us from room to room, looked at the photo like she was seeing it for the first time. She took a slow, shaky breath. “That’s, uh. My husband, Billy. And that’s our daughter, Jayla.”
Waylay opened her mouth to ask another question, but I interrupted, sensing Liza didn’t want to talk about more family members that hadn’t been mentioned until now. There was a reason this big house had been closed up from the rest of the world. And I guessed the reason was in that picture.
“Have any plans this weekend, Liza?” I cut in, giving Waylay a little shake of my head.
She put the photo face down on the table. “Plans? Ha!” she scoffed. “I do the same thing every damn day. Drag my ass out of bed and putter. All day, every day. Inside, outside.”
“What are you puttering on this weekend?” Waylay asked.
I gave her a thumbs-up that Liza couldn’t see.
“Garden needs some attention. Don’t suppose either of you like tomatoes? Got ’em comin’ out of my ears.”
“Waylay and I love tomatoes,” I said as my niece mimed vomiting on the floor.
“I’ll send you home with a bushel then,” Liza decided.
“I’ll be damned. You got all the burnt crusty stuff off the stove top,” Liza observed two hours later. She was leaning over her range while I rested on the floor, my legs stretched out in front of me.
I was sweating, and my fingers were cramped from aggressive scrubbing. But the progress was undeniable. The mound of dishes was done and put away, and the range gleamed black on all surfaces. I’d taken all of the papers, boxes, and bags off the island and tasked Liza with sorting it all into Keep and Toss piles. The Keep pile was four times the size of the Toss pile, but it still counted as progress.
Waylay was making her own kind of progress. As soon as she’d fixed the errant e-reader that had eaten Liza’s download and a printer that had lost its Wi-Fi connection, Liza had handed over an old Blackberry I’d found in the drawer next to the sink. If Waylay could coax it back to life, Liza said I could have it. A free phone with a number none of my old contacts had? It was perfect.
“I’m starving,” Waylay announced, throwing herself down dramatically on the now-visible counter. Randy the beagle barked as if to emphasize the direness of my niece’s starvation. Kitty the pitbull was sound asleep in the middle of the floor, her tongue lolling out onto the floor.
“Then let’s eat,” Liza said, clapping her hands.
On the word “eat,” both dogs and my niece snapped to attention.
“’Course, I’m not cooking in here. Not with it looking showroom new,” Liza added. “We’ll go to Dino’s. My treat.”
“Their pepperoni is the best,” Waylay said, perking up.
“I could eat a whole pepperoni pie myself,” Liza agreed, hitching up her cargo shorts.
It was nice to see my niece getting comfortable with an adult, but I would have liked it better if I was the one she was sharing pepperoni preferences with.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was failing a test in a class I’d forgotten to attend all semester.