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The woman laughed like I wasn’t being completely serious.
I just stared at her until her laughter died off.
“Oh, you know, get her to use her creativity. We really want this to be a project both parents and their children work on together.”
“So no just ducking into Walmart for a Spider-Man costume then?”
The woman laughed even harder. “Oh gosh, no, can you imagine? What would that teach them?”
“That Marvel rocks,” I muttered, shoving the paper into my back pocket.
“What was that?”
I forced a smile as fake as hers. This was the downside of sending my kid to a fancy-pants school, and now I was going to have to suck it up and deal. “I said I can’t wait to get into it. Amelia’s costume will be the best you’ve ever seen.”
Amelia let out a cheer, and the smile I gave her was genuine.
We were halfway across the parking lot when my phone rang, my neighbor’s name flashing up on the screen. Dread swamped me, and I stabbed at the ‘answer’ button frantically. She never called me, not unless Gran was causing a problem. “Geraldine? What’s wrong? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, but I just wanted to find out which days you’ll need me next week because Jordan has a week full of practices and appointments. I don’t want to leave you high and dry, but I really don’t think I’ll be around much. Can Peggy help?”
I sank into the driver’s seat and dropped my head down onto the steering wheel. “All week? That sucks.”
Geraldine felt bad, I knew, but there was nothing she could do about it.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I’ll work something out. You’re still good for tonight, though? It’s just an hour or two while I’m at work.”
“Yep, no problem. I’ll turn the monitor on.”
We’d hooked up a baby monitor so Geraldine could still be at her place while Gran and Amelia slept. Nine times out of ten, neither would make a peep, but the monitor meant my neighbor could just duck over if either of them woke.
Gran looked at me in confusion when we walked through the door, but her face lit up when she spotted Amelia. “Lyric! How was school?”
The sadness hit me in the gut like a freight train. Peggy had said just last week that Gran was getting worse, and here was the proof of it, right in my face yet again.
Amelia’s expression turned sad. “I’m Amelia, Nanny. Not Lyric. That’s Lyric.” She pointed up at me.
“Hey, Gran.” I lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave.
Gran’s face furrowed in confusion, but then she laughed and hushed my daughter. “Silly girl. Always trying to trick me. Tell me how your day was.”
Amelia launched into tales of crafts and writing practice and sensory play, while I tried to fight down a wave of exhaustion. By the time I met Zeph at the store, I was in a foul mood, annoyed with everyone and everything and wishing I could just take a holiday from my life. I followed him down the cleaning product aisle, dragging my feet as exhaustion and sadness and decision fatigue consumed me.
“Lemon lime or strawberry sunburst scent?” Zeph held up two bottles of disinfectant for my inspection.
I stared at him. Why the hell was he asking me? Why was I even here? This was a ridiculous waste of time to end a day that had already been spectacularly shitty.
“What?” he asked. “Would you prefer wild berry? They have that too.”
I couldn’t make another decision today. I just couldn’t. The ticking time bomb inside me exploded. “You know what?” I threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t care, Zeph! I don’t care if you pick tutti-fucking-fruitti and wear it as aftershave. I don’t care if they have five hundred different scents. It’s the stuff we clean the damn toilets with, they’re going to smell like shit no matter what you do. So please. For the love of your fucking God, can you just decide yourself?”
It was really my gran or Amelia or Amelia’s teacher or my neighbor, or a combination of all four who had built me up to this point, but I couldn’t yell at any of them. Amelia was a baby. My grandmother didn’t understand. It was my choice to send Amelia to a school that had high expectations, and I had to deal with the repercussions. I certainly couldn’t yell at Geraldine next door when she was helping me out.
But Zeph? I could yell at him.
And apparently, I had. Loud enough for the entire store to hear, because every person within earshot was staring in our direction.
Zeph put two bottles of disinfectant back on the shelf and focused on me. “I only asked because you said you didn’t like the one we have at the church.” Concern was written all over his face. Not anger that I had just yelled at him in the middle of a supermarket. Not embarrassment or irritation because he had done nothing except try to do something nice for me.
