Page 40 of One Touch

“Thank you. It was a while ago, but it still hurts sometimes. I think the hardest thing was when my mom left. I was eighteen, but I still felt really abandoned. I guess she’s still having her breakdown because she hasn’t been back once.”

“My mom died.”

I felt my chest tighten. I hoped I wasn’t making things worse for Ava. My hunch was that she needed to talk about that stuff, but as everyone in this town knew, my hunches weren’t always correct. “Yeah. I’m so sorry, Ava.”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember her much. I think she still loved my dad.”

“I’m sure she did.”

“So what’s ‘good thing, bad thing?’” And just like that, she was ready to talk about something else.

“Well, it’s actually really easy to play. You basically just say one good thing that happened to you today, then one bad thing.”

“Do youhaveto say the bad thing?”

“Nope. If nothing bad happened, that’s fine. But you know, it really helps to share the bad as well as the good. Makes you feel better. Always did for me, anyway.”

“Okay. You go first.”

“Well. My good thing is that it’s my first day as your nanny!” I held out a hand for a high five. “Come on, girl. Bring it home!”

She slapped my palm and gave me a goofy, sticky grin.

“My bad thing was that I didn’t get much work done at my bookstore. In fact, I’m finding it hard to focus on my bookstore at all at the moment.”

“How come?”

“You know things didn’t work out so well with me and Vlad?”

“You dumped his ass!”

I laughed like a donkey. “Well, I’m kinda through with men. Romance, too. True love and all that. Having my wedding fall apart kinda makes me feel like I don’t want to read any romance novels. And if I can’t read them, I can’t sell them. I keep saying weird, off-putting stuff to the customers.”

She stuck out her lower lip. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. And you know, it made me feel better to talk to you about it. Your turn.”

Her brow furrowed in thought. “Well, my good thing for the day is this ice cream.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, oh, actually another good thing! We’re starting a class project on the stars and the universe and all the celestial bodies.”

“Celestial bodies, huh?”

“Yeah, that means comets and planet-destroying asteroids!”

“Wowzer, that sounds really cool!”

“An asteroid that was sixty miles wide would wipe out all the life on this planet.” Ava took a long, contented lick of her ice cream.

“That’s . . . not so cool?”

“Yeah. But the cool thing is Miss Brown said we should do some stargazing at home! Do you think Dad will let me stay up? We have to try to take photos of the stars.”

“I think so. I’d have to ask.”

“Anyway, my bad thing was I got told off.” The way she said it, so quickly and easily, took me by surprise.

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