Page 9 of Mama Si's Paradise

“Mama Si,” the woman who’d been interviewing me said, her head still lowered. I should have done the same, lowered my head and avoided those eyes with more colors in them than a rainbow—except I couldn’t. She’d put a spell on me, and I couldn’t look away if I tried.

Her pale, almost completely white skin looked so smooth and soft and perfect. The way those lashes that touched her thin arched brows curved up. The way those lips, painted a deep mauve, glistened.

Mama Si.

She existed. It wasn’t just the name of the mansion like I’d thought—she was an actual woman.

“Please forgive her. She’s just an applicant for the open housekeeping position,” said the woman, her voice light as a breeze, barely a whisper now.

Please forgive her,she said. For what?

But Mama Si leaned a bit closer, those strange eyes searching every inch of my face, studying every feature like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever witnessed in her life.

God, she smelled so fucking good…

“What do they call you, doll?”

Fuck, it was so hard to find my voice. “Fall,” I said on the third try.

Her brows—those thin, perfectly arched brows—shot up to the middle of her forehead. “Fall,” she whispered, and that whisper echoed in my head, bouncing off my skull, repeating itself eternally. She then threw a glance at the woman behind her, holding up the umbrella. “How fitting.”

Fitting?Fitting how?

“It’s actually Autumn,” I said. “My name is Autumn Hayes.”

She smiled, and it was like the sun setting slowly on the horizon while you sat there with a blanket over your shoulders and watched it, completely at peace.

“A beautiful name for a beautiful doll,” she said. “Tell me, Autumn Hayes, why do you wake up in the morning?”

I blinked. “What?”

She came closer. “Why do you wake up in the morning, doll? It’s a simple question.”

Why did I wake up in the morning?What the hell…

I shook my head. “I don’t…I don’t know.” I woke up in the morning to live. I woke up in the morning to make sure Brandon had his breakfast ready and his clothes pressed before work. I woke up in the morning to clean and cook and make sure we had everything we needed to just…live.

I woke up in the morning to go to bed at night.

The way those glossy lips stretched and stretched and stretched until I saw all her perfect teeth…

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“So young,” she breathed. “Where do you come from, doll, if you don’t know where you’re going?”

“I-I-I…” Words died on my lips. “Detroit.”

“Detroit,” she repeated, like she wanted to taste the word on her tongue. “And who waits for you in Detroit?”

A sound went off in my head, like an alarm ringing. A warning—do not go there!A goddamn warning.

“No one.” I raised my chin, defying the thoughts in my own head.

No one waited for me in Detroit. For all I knew, Missy was fucking dead. She’d never taken my calls when I first came here and tried to reach her. Never.Good riddance.I’d never really needed her, anyway.

No one waited for me anywhere.

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