Chapter 3

The days dragged on, one after another, in that same suffocating patience.

Aunt Leona had settled into my home for good.

Gone was any trace of manners or restraint. She treated the place like her own.

Mornings, while George and I left for work, she slept until she woke on her own.

When we were out, she cranked the TV to full volume and watched decades-old dramas. The neighbors had come knocking twice already.

But what I truly couldn't stand was how fast the cost of living had climbed.

At the end of the month, I pulled up the water, power, and gas bills on my phone the way I always did, and the moment I saw the total I sucked in a breath.

Electricity: eight hundred and sixty dollars.

Water: three hundred and twenty dollars.

You have to understand, even at the peak of summer, our power bill had never topped five hundred and change.

I thought about everything Leona did.

She couldn't stand the heat. Whenever she was home, the AC in the living room and in her room ran from morning to night, set to sixty-eight degrees.

She said her back was bad, so she soaked in the tub every day, over an hour at a time, the bathroom light and the heat lamp both blazing, the water running and running while I listened and felt my heart bleed.

Phone in hand, I walked over to my mother, who was watching TV, and tried to keep my voice steady.

"Mom, look at this month's power bill. Isn't it a little much?"

She glanced at the screen and said, unbothered,

"So it's a little more. It's hot. How are we supposed to get by without the AC?"

"But this is way too much." I couldn't stop my voice from rising. "It's over three hundred dollars more than last month! And the water bill's nearly doubled!"

Her face darkened. She glanced back at the closed door of Leona's room and lowered her voice.

"Nat, what are you getting at? It's just a little extra on the water and power. Your Aunt Leona is staying here for free, and you're going to nickel-and-dime her over this?"

"I'm not nickel-and-diming anyone!"

My hands were shaking with anger. "Mom, this isn't about the money! It's about the way she lives! She can't just waste like this! We've got a mortgage every month, a kid to raise. All of it costs money. And it's money we worked hard for!"

"Oh, so you're something special because you earn a paycheck?"

Her voice went sharp too. "Have you forgotten how poor we were when you were little, how your Aunt Leona bought you new clothes and treats every few days? You've forgotten even that? She's got nowhere else to go, her health is bad, she came to me for help, and you, the younger one here, you can't make room for her?"

The same old speech.

Every time I brought up Leona, my mother pulled out that scrap of kindness from my childhood and held it up like a shield.

But those so-called new clothes and treats left almost no mark in my memory at all.

"Mom, that was years ago! And she's not staying a few days, she means to stay for good! She's turned my house into her retirement home!"

"That's nonsense!"

She slapped the remote down on the coffee table. "Natalie, I never thought you'd turn into this cold-blooded, penny-pinching person! She's been my friend my whole life. As long as I'm alive, I can't just abandon her! If you can't stand the sight of her, then throw me out along with her!"

As she said it, her eyes rimmed red.

I looked at her, and all the hurt and anger inside me gave way in an instant to a vast helplessness.

What else could I say? Fight with her? Push her until she made herself sick?

I went quietly back to my room, shut the door, and buried my face in the pillow.

George came in, wrapped his arms around me from behind, and sighed. "Let it go. Just think of it as money spent to keep your mom happy."

I didn't answer, but the tears came anyway, whether I wanted them or not.

And so Leona stayed in my home for half a year. It was supposed to be temporary, but in truth she became someone who freeloaded meals every single day and ran the whole household like an empress with everyone waiting on her hand and foot.

The atmosphere at home grew stranger by the day. George and I spoke less and less, and even Caleb turned cautious, afraid to raise his voice.

This home, the one I'd traded ten years of my youth to build, was being turned upside down by an outsider.