“You and my dad might think I’m pretty, but the rest of the world doesn’t seem to agree with you.”
“That mother of yours,” Marta muttered with a frown. “Your father needs to smack her upside the head for how she treats you.”
The idea of my dad striking my mom, even in jest, was preposterous. He was the kindest person I knew, which she took full advantage of on a regular basis. The way my mother treated him had driven me crazy ever since the day I realized most of my friends’ moms didn’t walk all over their husbands. I didn’t understand what my dad saw in her, and I’d never found the courage to ask him. “We both know that’s not going to happen.”
“You’re probably right”—her lips quirked up at the sides—“but that doesn't mean I’m going to stop hoping that he’ll honor the long-standing tradition of trading her in for a newer model.”
My eyes widened before laughter bubbled up my chest. “My mother can never hear you say something like that. She’d lose her mind, and it wouldn’t matter how much I begged my dad to keep you on staff. You’d be gone so fast both our heads would spin.”
“Your mother isn’t in the house.” She shook her head and sighed. “I learned my lesson last time she tried to fire me.”
“Same here,” I mumbled, my stomach roiling at the memory from five years ago when I got my first period. I’d bled through a pair of white pants in the middle of class, and my teacher sent me to the nurse’s office. The school tried to call my mother to ask her to bring in a change of clothes, but she didn’t answer. My dad was a two-hour drive away at a work meeting, but he picked up the instant he saw the school’s number on his caller ID. Since he couldn’t come rescue me and my mother didn’t answer his call either, he sent Marta in his place.
Seeing how devastated I was, she decided a skip day was in order. When my mom got home from her spa appointment and found me curled up on the couch, eating a box of chocolates while watching a chick flick, she went ballistic. I’d gotten a lecture about sucking it up when things didn’t go my way—as though the aging beauty queen had any personal experience with being embarrassed in front of her peers. Then she went off about how I needed to be careful what I ate so I wouldn’t gain a ton of weight now that I’d have hormones to contend with.
Once my mother finished ripping me to shreds, she’d turned her ire on Marta. She’d gotten an epic dressing-down about overstepping—and that was before she’d learned that “the help” had dared to sign me out of school without express permission to do so. Luckily, my dad came home right as she was telling Marta to pack her bags and not to expect a letter of recommendation. Although he usually let my mother have her way, he’d stood firm when I started sobbing and begged him not to send Marta away. I’d waited on pins and needles when he’d taken my mother aside to talk, and I still wasn’t sure how he’d convinced her to let the matter drop. Neither Marta nor I ever wanted to go through something like that again, so we’d been extra careful around my mother ever since.
“I came up to let you know I just pulled a batch of freshly baked, flourless fluffernutter thumbprint cookies out of the oven.” Her dark eyes gleamed with mischievousness as she added, “But I’m not sure if you deserve any since you’re being a big chicken about that boy.”
“Am not,” I huffed, my mouth practically watering for a taste of the cookies that by all rights should be gross. After my mother had gone on a gluten-free kick last month—it was just her newest weight loss craze and not because she had celiac disease or anything—Marta had taken pity on me by trying a bunch of different recipes for baked treats until she hit on a crazy good one. They were jam-packed with peanut butter and marshmallows, and she knew darn well I was addicted to them. Widening my eyes and sticking out my bottom lip, I waited for her to cave.
“Fine, you can have a couple before your mother gets home.” Marta shook her head and wrapped her fingers around my bicep. “But only because I’m still holding out hope that you’ll get up the nerve to talk to the boy tomorrow at school. As the new kid, I’m sure he’ll appreciate a friendly face. You know how your classmates can be.”
Brutal was the word that came to mind, especially when dealing with scholarship students. The guy I had been drooling over all summer long wasn’t going to attend Black Mountain Academy on scholarship, but he’d probably have more in common with them than the rest of us. His situation was unusual—my neighbors, the Whitneys, were covering his tuition since they were his new foster parents.
The whole setup was super strange. Eleanor Whitney didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, and her husband, William, spent more time in his office than at home. Like most families in my parents’ circle, they tended to write checks to charity rather than giving their time. I didn’t know what had prompted them to sign up to become foster parents to a senior in high school of all people, but I was certain it wasn’t because they were suddenly overwhelmed with the need to open their home to some random person. “There hasn’t been anything going around the grapevine about him?”
The hired help for the homes in our community were tuned in to gossip more than anybody else. They heard all sorts of things when nobody thought they were listening, and Marta had asked around about him for me as soon as she caught on to my interest in him. “As a matter of fact, there is.”
That wasn’t the answer I was expecting, but I was excited to learn more. “Ooh, tell me!”
She let go of my arm and lifted both hands in the air, palms up. Moving them up and down opposite of each other, she teased, “Cookies or information about the boy. Which will you choose?”
“Both!” I cried, tugging on her arm to lead her out of my room. “You can tell me everything while I wolf down those cookies. If I don’t grab them now, I’ll be limited to one after dinner.”
“I see how it is.” She pretended to drag her feet and laughed. “Use me for my treats and the stories I hear when I’m at the store.”
“Hey! The street goes both ways here,” I protested. “I share all my romance novels with you, plus my streaming logins so you can watch hours upon hours of shows and movies.”
“True,” she conceded with a smile as we made our way downstairs. “But that’s as much for you as it is for me because you like talking to me about your favorite books and shows.”
I paused in the foyer and scanned her expression for any sign she wasn’t just playing around. There was nothing there, but I never wanted Marta to feel as though she wasn’t important to me. It didn’t matter that my parents paid her salary—as far as I was concerned, she was family. “Our friendship isn’t dependent on cookies or gossip. I’d miss chatting with you about books and movies I’ve enjoyed, but I wouldn’t care if you said you never wanted to read or watch the same thing as me again. You’re important to me, Marta. I’ll take you in my life however you want to be there.”
“You’re important to me, too.” She beamed a big smile my way. “And not just because you’re wise beyond your years and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”