Page 62 of The Cinderella Arrangement

The woman shoved a microphone under my nose. I stared at in shock for a second, refusing to look at the video camera aimed at me, and smacked it away. Didn’t they understand that I didn’t want to be harassed?

“No. Get off of my lawn.”

None of them budged. When I was with Luke, he always shoved through the paparazzi like moving through a packed concert. I edged through them to get to my crappy car parked on the street. They followed me like a strange, nonthreatening mob and encircled my car. All their requests were drowned by the car’s engine and they moved out of the way when it lurched forward.

They took pictures through the windshield; some of them still screaming requests. Jesus. How long is this going to last? Surely, people would tire of reading about the blonde hooker—escort—or whatever it was they were calling me.

I didn’t really feel like going to the store because I knew I would have to drive back home with the groceries where they were camped out. SoI veered my car into the highway and headed instead toward the soup kitchen.

I wasn’t scheduled to come in, but I couldn’t handle sitting in my apartment alone all day. As I walked across the parking lot, I saw that half the soup kitchen's windows were smashed.

“What happened?” I asked the men sweeping up the broken glass.

They shrugged. “I don’t think you’re supposed to go in there.”

Ignoring him, I pushed through the door and my shoes crunched over shards. Inside was a scene of devastation. Black graffiti covered the yellow walls in high arches. I bent over and righted a chair. As I walked through to the kitchen, a sick feeling descended over me.

Shelly was there with a clipboard in her hands, shaking her head. “Our inventory suffered a huge loss. They took our best pots and made a mess out of the pantry.”

“Who did this?”

“You haven’t even seen the worst of it.”

She beckoned me to the back that led to the small garden I helped build. I stared in dismay at the lumps of brown earth everywhere and pushed the door open in a rage. There was nothing left but tatters of green. All of our herbs—gone. The bok choy and the cabbage lay on the ground like headless corpses.

“It doesn’t matter,” I croaked. “We’ll just have to do it again. Re-plant everything.”

“I’m not sure Carol will want to. It’ll be hard enough replacing all the supplies we lost. There’s no money in the budget for the garden.”

I felt the familiar sting of frustration at Carol’s rigid policies until I remembered: I have money. I could pour thousands into this place.

Ok, it wasn’t like I had thousands upon thousands, but the money Luke gave me would help repair most of the damage.

Giving your money away is such a stupid idea.

But the money was making me sick. I didn’t want it anymore. The articles written about me made me feel ashamed, even though I had done nothing wrong. It reminded me that at its core, our relationship was represented by dollar signs. I knew that it meant much more than that, butI had to get rid of it. All of it.

I cried when I got home and wrote the check, clutching an eight thousand, five hundred and sixty two dollar check. I couldn’t empty my entire bank account—I still needed to eat and pay my bills—but at least most of it was gone.

You are so fucking stupid. Just shoot yourself now.

It would be the most generous, dumb thing I ever did.

Natalie will freak.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Carol looked at me as if I was on the edge of sanity, which I probably was.

Just take it before I change my mind. “Yes, on one condition, though.”

She folded her arms. “What?”

“I want more authority in the kitchen. There's also got to be some sort ofsecurity system so that this never happens again. We need cameras and padlocked gates enclosing the backyard.”

“Fine.”

Carol stuck out her hand, and I grabbed it.

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