Page 82 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

“She’s safe,” she said fiercely.

My eyes went back to her mother’s and stopped.

The intensity there, letting me know that she would do absolutely anything to protect her child, made me stop asking questions.

My eyes went down to the counter where I saw a yellow Post-it Note pad sitting.

I grabbed a pen from the cup holder and scribbled my name, address, and phone number on the Post-it.

Handing it to her, I said, “If you ever need help…”

She took the Post-it and stuck it into her pocket.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, but I left her and her daughter standing there, even though my entire soul screamed to go back and take them with me.

Chapter

Eight

Having a best friend is wild. Like, she’ll kill for me. But she also would just as easily throw a vacuum at me.

—Merriam’s secret thoughts

MERRIAM

The last thing that I wanted to do today was go home and spend any more time with my father, who’d let me have an earful after Jeremiah had left.

Not only had he yelled at me about Jeremiah, but then he’d yelled at me for not covering up the bruise on my face well enough that people were noticing it.

It fucking broke my heart that my daughter had been present to listen to him berate me in the empty candy store.

The only sale we’d made that day had been from the man that’d offered me help.

And now, Dad and I were both driving home because the winter storm had started.

It was cold.

So. Cold.

My heater had stopped working sometime last fall, and I hadn’t had enough time or money to get the thing fixed.

I was lucky that was the only thing that’d broken at this point.

At least I could bundle Anleigh up in her new coat.

My eyes took in the neighborhood as we drove past.

Everyone was home and preparing for the winter storm that was about to hit.

The weathermen predicted that we were about to get ten inches of snow.

In our part of Oklahoma, ten inches was the max we got in one year.

To be getting that in one winter storm was going to shut the town down.

Dad had given me thirty dollars to buy enough food to last us for the next week—which was laughable because thirty dollars wasn’t enough to feed one person for a week, let alone three—and I’d stopped by the store and did my best to stretch thirty dollars.

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