Page 18 of Please Send Snow
“You’ve done enough,” she tells me, her tone condescending. “Get her out of here, Michael.”
Michael hurries over, his expression so sorrowful that I can’t find it in myself to argue.
And besides, why bother? It’s obviously a lost cause.
But in spite of having surrendered meekly to everything that’s happened to me personally this year, something about this situation has me feeling ready to stand and fight.
“Come along, Miss Foster,” Michael says gently. “Let’s get you to your room.”
I allow myself to be led down the hallway, back to the broom closet.
“I thought I had to be out tonight,” I whisper.
“Everyone is too distracted right now to notice,” he tells me. “And once they get their heads around it, they’ll realize it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“What will you do, Michael?” I ask, turning to him.
“I’ll do whatever I have to,” he tells me calmly. “Just like I always have. Nothing in this life is promised, Miss Foster. I think you know that better than most.”
He’s not wrong there.
“Maybe Mr. Stone will help you with a room to rent,” he suggests. “It’s lovely that you found a job after all.”
“Thank you,” I tell him, so happy to see his blue eyes crinkling in a smile that I don’t bother to tell him that I somehow didn’t bother to negotiate any pay. Or that I ran off too quickly today to even open the discussion.
The truth is that I might just be fired before I’m even officially hired.
And how long could the job have lasted anyway?
As soon as he’s done tearing down the lodge, Jake Stone will just move on to ruining lives somewhere else.
6
MADDIE
Iwake up on my cot the next morning and pull the comforter closer around me just to soak in its lovely warmth one last time.
This broom closet may not be fancy, but at least it’s mine.
For now.
And, odd as it might sound, I actually feel more at home in this cozy space than I used to in the room my stepmom designed for me.
Right after they got married, Delilah and Dad moved us out of the small brick cape cod I’d lived in all my life, and into the enormous house she liked to callthe estate.
She was so proud when she presented us with the bedroom she had dreamed up for me. The room was enormous, with a crystal chandelier, marble floors, hot pink walls, and too many sequined throw pillows to count. My dad once joked with me that it looked like what would happen if Miss Piggy and I-Dream-of-Jeannie got an apartment together. Delilah definitely wouldn’t have found that funny.
Plenty of girls my age would have loved it, but all that glamor was completely at odds with my own down-to-earth style. There wasn’t even a single bookshelf.
When I first saw it, I’d almost felt hurt. It was clear that this woman didn’t know me at all. Or maybe it was more accurate that she did know me just fine, but this was a room for the stepdaughter she wished I would be.
“Wow,” was all Dad could say as he took it all in.
“Did you notice you got the biggest bedroom suite in the house besides ours?” Delilah asked me, an expectant smile on her face.
“Thank you,” I told her politely.
I mean, there wasn’t anyone else living in the house, so it would have been kind of weird if I didn’t get the second-best room. But I didn’t think it was a good idea to bring that up, and I didn’t really care one way or the other. Honestly, the only thing I’d actually noticed about it, besides the decor, was that it was the farthest space in the whole house from their room.
