Page 83 of No More Billionaires

“Thanks, Daddy. I’m okay. Or I will be. It felt good tonight to just put it all out there and be totally honest with Larson. Of course, he thinks I’m crazy-pants now. I hope I get that promotion because he’s literally going to be scared to work with me,” I joked, trying to cover the devastating pain that thought caused.

Daddy laughed. “Maybe he’ll put in a good word with Tom Thompson and get you promoted just to move you out of his department. I know that’s how it goes where I work—get the crazy ones into managementquickwhere they can do less harm.”

“Maybe Momma needs a promotion,” I said, and we both broke into fits of giggles.

“She for damn sure needs a job,” he said. “All these years I thought I was taking care of her by giving her whatever she wanted, whether we could afford it or not. Most of the time it was ‘not,’ and none of it made her any happier anyway. Now, we’ve got some pretty serious debt. It’ll take us both working for years to dig our way out.”

He shrugged. “I knew something was going to have to change. I was just too scared to say it to her. I’m not anymore—my brave baby girl inspires me. I’ve got to face the dragon.”

I held up my imaginary sword, like Bilbo bearing Sting.

“Face the dragon!” I chimed in, and we laughed together before he got up and stepped into the hallway to call home.

* * *

Much as I hated to, I went home the next morning.

My clothes lived there, and while showing up at Waffle House in a shredded evening gown on Saturday morning had been good fun, it would get old pretty quick.

Daddy decided to stay away a bit longer, betting it was just the thing to get under this particular dragon’s scales.

It appeared to be working.

Momma stood at the doorway of my walk-in closet, weak-eyed and pitiful. “Did he say when he’s coming home?”

I flipped through the hanging clothes, short on time and even shorter on patience. “I don’t know, Momma. This problem was a long time in the making. It may take a while.”

“I never thought he’d actually leave me. What am I supposed to do without him?” She burst into tears yet again.

Pulling a skirt and top from their hangers, I decided to test her, to dish out a taste of her own special brand of bitter pill.

“Well, you’ve always said you could do better. Here’s your chance. I’m sure there are lots of rich older men who’d love to snap up an attractive divorcee.”

“Divorce?” she shrieked in a panicked tone. “Did he mention divorce? I don’t want some nasty old rich man who only cares about a small waist size and a smooth forehead. And who else but your daddy would put up with me?”

She left the closet and collapsed onto my bed, weeping loudly.

“I’ve gone and done it now, haven’t I? I’ve lost him. And you hate me, and Cadence hates me, too. She wouldn’t even speak to me in the car last night. All I wanted was for you girls to have a good life, to have some security, and not have to worry about money.”

There were times I’d thought I would have loved to see Momma laid low, but I wasn’t actually getting any pleasure out of this pathetic scene. I sat on the bed beside her.

“Why not encourage us to work hard in school then? To have great careers with high salaries? Why not be more proud of Cadence’s incredible brain than her beautiful face?”

“I am proud of her for being smart. But that’s not what men care about. They care about beauty. I would’ve given anything in the world when I was a girl to be as pretty as you two are.”

“You are pretty, Momma.”

She shook her head. “No. I may be halfway decent now with all the work I’ve put into it but not always. I had buck teeth and mousy brown hair and a round nose. My mother wouldn’t let me get contacts until the end of high school. Nobody ever looked twice at me until college. When you two were born and you were such beautiful angels, I felt so blessed to have pretty children. And I was so happy for you because I knew your life would be easier for it.”

I would’ve laughed had the moment not been so sad. Whatever beauty I’d been born with hadn’t made my life easy.

I’d wished more than once I’d been born with no obvious attractiveness. At times I’d even wished I’d been born a boy so Momma wouldn’t have felt so compelled to harp on my appearance and push me to parlay it into the kind of life and marriage she thought would equal happiness.

“Momma—this may surprise you, but there are men out there who don’t care that much about outward beauty. They’re more interested in what’s inside.”

“Name one.”

Larson.

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