Page 11 of You've Got Hate Mail
“I’m working on finding something new?—”
“Take your time. We’ve got her for as long as you need.”
Guilt socks me in the gut.
I pay rent and do repairs around here in exchange for occasional help with Lav, but what Mabel’s already done for our family is of a magnitude that I can’t repay.
And I don’t have any other readily available options.
“Appreciate it,” I say as I head out of the bathroom.
“You’re part of the family too.”
I know she means it.
And I still feel like the part of the family that doesn’t quite fit.
“Thank you,” Cricket says.
I glance back, thinking she’s talking to me, but her wet eyes are aimed squarely at Mabel.
“It gets easier,” Mabel tells her. “And we’re here for you for as long as you need to work through this.”
I don’t know if she’s talking to Cricket or to me.
But I know I still feel like I’ve taken more than I can ever give back.
3
ANTI-MEAN GIRLS
Cricket
If I could’ve swirleddown the drain with the last of that shower water, that would’ve been fabulous.
But I didn’t, so now I’m accompanying Mabel, my host, into a large Victorian-style house that looks like it was once a pink-and-yellow gingerbread castle.
Heath’s brown-pigtailed, hazel-eyed daughter Lavender is with us. She’s told me she’s six but almost seven, loves cats except for the really hairy kinds, and she was asked not to come back to summer camp after dressing like Aunt Pip and meowing too much.
That tracks with the cat-ear headband and the black leotard with the tail and the whiskers drawn on her face, plus all of the meowing I heard while her father was asking me questions in the bathroom, though I don’t know whatdressing like Aunt Pipentails.
She’s adorable.
And she’s seen me naked too.
I’ve likely scarred her for life.
Not to mention what I did to her father.
“I can’t believe I punched him,” I whisper to Mabel, who’s smartly put together, also in all black, and who carries an air of competence with her. I can’t tell if she’s my age, several years younger, or several years older.
She’s classic like that.
“My fault.” She turns the handle on the ornate door with a stained-glass inlay and ushers me into a foyer with a crystal chandelier, thick plank flooring that seems original, and an antique sideboard with a decorative ceramic vase with dried lavender in it. The smells of coffee and cinnamon rolls tease my nose as we walk farther into the house. “We have a system for letting him know when new guests arrive, and I was the broken link.”
“I know a boy named Linc,” Lavender announces as Mabel steers me down a hallway lined with ornately framed pictures of women of all ages, sizes, and races against the pink floral wallpaper. “He’s dumb. He doesn’t think dragons and unicorns can have babies.”
“Together or on their own?” Mabel asks.
