Page 2 of Luck of the Draw

I knew she meant well, but sometimes her lack of confidence in me hurt worse than Randy’s.

Still, I understood the source of her hesitation. I’d never gone to college, and while I’d had a good job as an office manager before Liam was born, that had been over thirteen years ago. Randy and I had agreed that I’d stay home with the kids. Then he’d left abruptly, propelling me into the job market with a human-sized gap in my résumé. It had taken me two months to find my current telemarketing job, and I’d felt lucky to have a paycheck. But every day felt like the one before, in a soul-sucking, hopeless way. And I’d still be wallowing in those feelings if Bear, my sponsor in the Bad Luck Club, hadn’t pushed me to apply for a new job as my biweekly challenge.

Actually, he had challenged me to apply to no less thanfivejobs. He’d even picked them out, knowing I’d freak out and apply for the positions that required the least experience. I was pretty sure one of them, an opening posted by a portrait artist specializing in clowns, was his idea of a joke, but I applied to them all anyway. While I hadn’t gotten any of the positions, Ihadgotten an interview, which had inspired me to keep looking. Now, after a successful phone interview, I had an in-person interview at a busy gastroenterologist’s office. The pay was only slightly more than what I made now, but the hours were better and there was room for advancement, or at least for me to take my experience and move up somewhere else. It was promising, and for the first time in months, I didn’t feel so hopeless.

“Is Randy still getting the kids tomorrow?”

I grabbed a butter knife out of the drawer and started to slather peanut butter on the bread. “Yeah. Sheree is picking them up after school.”

“What kind of name is Sheree?” Mom asked in disgust for the umpteenth time. “She sounds like a floozy.”

“Mom!” I whisper-shouted. “You can’t say that around the boys. What if they tell their father or Sheree?”

She lifted her chin. “They have a right to know their father hooked up with a loose woman.”

That was the problem, though. I didn’t think Sheree was all that loose. Randy had told her he was separated, and she was young enough to fall for his bullshit. Even if she had two kids.

“Stop. She’s a nice woman, and she’s good to the boys.”

My mother’s face contorted with anger. “You’re far too nice, Deeandra. You let people walk all over you.”

I stared at her, mentally shaking my head at the irony. I’d spent my entire life letting her walk all over me. Was it any wonder I let everyone else do it too?

But I couldn’t tell her that, no matter how many times Bear gave me challenges that practically screamed “tell your mother off.” He’d given me that exact challenge in the beginning, which had earned me a demerit when I hadn’t followed through. Given that the Bad Luck Club had a three-and-a-half-strikes-and-you’re-out policy, and I was at two and a half demerits, Bear had resorted to skirting the issue. The fact was, I couldn’t afford to piss my mother off, both literally and figuratively. So for now, I bit my tongue.

“You must be exhausted. Go on home,” I said with a wave. “I appreciate you helping me with the boys.” Which was true. She didn’t have to help, and she didn’t rub my nose in the fact that she babysat her grandsons for free, like my friend Samantha’s mother did with her. And as much as my mother bossed me around, I knew her heart was in the right place.

She left, but not before mentioning that I’d left a sink full of dirty dishes that morning, that the back yard needed mowing and it wasn’t too soon to assign Liam that task, and when was the last time I’d changed the oil in my car?

I breathed a sigh of relief when she finally backed her car out of the driveway, then took a plate full of peanut butter sandwiches out to the living room, plopping down in the middle of the sofa.

“Did you cut mine into triangles?” Ollie asked as he snuggled into my side.

“Yep. Yours is on top.”

He snatched both triangles and resumed his snuggled position.

“I want a sandwich,” Liam said wistfully.

“I knew you would, so yours is on top of mine,” I said, holding the plate out to him. “Peanut butter and marshmallow creme, only don’t tell Grandma or she’ll throw a fit.”

Both boys giggled as Liam took his sandwich and grinned. “Rectangles.”

“You said you were too old for triangles, as though that were a thing.” I took my whole sandwich and placed the empty plate on the coffee table. “Now, tell me about your day. I want to hear abouteverything.”

Shockingly, they shared. Ollie told me more than his brother, of course, but Liam shared too. It helped that I knew he’d given a social studies presentation about Egypt and asked plenty of questions about his project as well as the other kids’ presentations. They were talkative, Liam more so than usual, so I was sad when I noticed the time, and reluctantly announced it was ten minutes past bedtime.

“Do we have to go to Dad’s tomorrow?” Ollie asked in a quiet voice.

I turned to face him, brushing a strand of hair from his forehead. “You don’t like going to Dad’s?”

He made a face, so I turned to Liam.

He shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s just not home.”

I wrapped my arms around them and held them close. “I know this is hard, but your dad loves you and wants to see you.” Because, for all the grief Randy had given me, hedidlove his sons. “So this is the way it needs to be.”

It had taken me months to accept our new life, so it was unreasonable to expect our kids to jump into it wholeheartedly. In the beginning, I’d felt hurt and betrayed, but as the months passed, those feelings had shifted. In spite of my awful job and the fear of not knowing what would come next, I felt a growing sense of personal freedom, something I hadn’t even realized I’d lost. Randy had always been a little controlling, but it had gotten worse after I quit my job to stay home. He said he was making all the money and should have most of the say. And like the good little girl I’d been raised to be, I hadn’t made a fuss. I’d gone along with what he wanted. And somewhere along the way, I’d lost myself.

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