The first of every month had become routine until the morning I learned I’d been paying for a life my stepdaughter wasn’t living.
I was in the kitchen Tom had remodeled with his own hands, wearing his old sweatshirt and staring at the transfer screen on my laptop.
Amount: $3,000.
Recipient: Hannah.
Reason: Tuition.
I learned I’d been paying for a life my stepdaughter wasn’t living.
Tom’s photograph sat on the windowsill beside the basil plant he’d insisted I couldn’t kill. In it, he had one arm around twelve-year-old Hannah.
Fourteen months earlier, in a hospital room that smelled like rain and antiseptic, Tom had squeezed my hand and whispered, “Take care of Hannah.”
I promised him I would.
So I clicked send.
“Take care of Hannah.”
“There,” I whispered to his picture. “I’m doing it, Tom. I don’t know if I’m doing it well, but I’m doing it.”
