“Is your mom coming tomorrow?”
Harold asked me that while I was sitting halfway up our stairs with one crutch wedged under my arm and Nicki’s winter coat stretched across my lap.
I stared at him.
He was holding a cup of coffee. A full one. Still steaming. He was wearing his good gray suit and the blue tie I bought him for his birthday, and he smelled like the expensive aftershave he only wears on days when he has meetings.
I was trying to work a stuck zipper with one hand while balancing a seven-year-old’s sleeve over the gray cast that ran from my left ankle all the way up past my knee.
“No,” I said. “My mother is not driving an hour here, taking the girls to school, driving an hour home, and then doing it all over again tomorrow.”
Harold checked his watch.
“What about Linda next door?”
“Linda has a job.”
“So do I.”