My ex and his mistress mocked me at my daughter’s birthday while I stood there in scrubs. They had no idea I was about to ruin everything they’d secretly planned behind my back.
I always knew exactly what it meant to be on your feet for fourteen hours, then spend another hour in the kitchen trying to cook something warm out of whatever you could scrape together from the fridge—and still fall asleep feeling like you didn’t get anything done.
After the divorce, Jake wasn’t exactly rushing to see our daughter.
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“I just need to live for myself for a while,” he said as he zipped up the duffel bag under our closet, the one I had built with my own hands.
“You’re stronger than I. You’ll manage.”
What I didn’t know then was that “live for himself” actually meant “live with a younger girl named Candy in a lakeview condo where the kitchen alone was bigger than my entire rental now.”
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Things with my dad were even worse.
He’d been sick for a long time, then unpaid bills kept piling up, and when he finally passed, he didn’t leave peace behind.
He left me a list of debts.
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The house I’d grown up in had to be sold. Every nail I pulled, every curtain I folded, every dent in the wall scraped off a part of me.
But I had no choice. I had to sell it to pay everything off.
“Mom, are we getting a new house?” my daughter Ellie asked as we packed boxes.
“No, princess. We’re getting a new home. One with peace and tea with honey.”
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She nodded like a grown-up. Serious. Brave.
The only bright spot my dad left behind was a savings account he had placed in Ellie’s name.
“For her future,” the attorney said. “The money’s for education, healthcare, or a home. As her mother, you’ll serve as trustee.”
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I’d almost forgotten about that money. I worked at a hospital as a janitor, took night shifts, filled in for anyone who called out.
