Now I was understanding my mother’s lesson.

Because it seemed I was now in the position that I had to make one of five choices.

First, ask Johnny for a deferment of the loan until I could figure something out.

Second, take Brooks out of daycare and take Margot up on her offer of free childcare for my son.

Third, tell Izzy I couldn’t afford the full mortgage and either move out, or ask her to cover part of it (a large part) so we could stay.

Fourth, quit the grocery store and find another job, maybe in the city (which might mean we’d have to move to the city), probably as a server in a high-end restaurant where I’d make in a week just on tips what I made at the store over a month.

Or fifth, get a second job, which would mean I’d have to lean on somebody to look after Brooks because I worked forty hours a week already. And since the grocery store was open from six to nine as well as on weekends (when it was open until ten on Saturday) I already had to lean on friends and family for Brooks. Whatever extra job I got would be in addition to that since it would definitely have to be outside normal daycare hours.

This last might happen anyway. Last night I’d also looked at rentals in Matlock, and even though they were less than Izzy’s mortgage payment, with daycare and all the rest, they’d have to be practically free.

The good news was, that morning when I got to work, I told Michael, the store manager, I’d be up for any overtime he could give me. And since it was the holiday season and he was looking for part-timers to help, he was all over it and said he could easily give me an extra fifteen to twenty hours a week.

For him, paying me time and a half would be half of what he’d have to pay an extra staff member, not to mention he’d save time and headache on a hiring process.

For me it was just time and a half.

It’d only be an extra seven fifty to a thousand bucks in the next month, but that would mean Christmas for Brooks and I’d still be able to push out my cushion until April. I’d also be close to a raise at the store, since I heard they gave you one after a year if you had a good performance evaluation.

Still.

Even with a five percent raise, that’d only be maybe fifteen extra dollars a week.

But the store had good health insurance.

And being in Matlock meant I was close to Izzy and Brooks’s support network.

But the bottom line was, I just simply could not afford my current situation and give a decent life to my child working at that store, even after I got a raise.

There was no way around it.

I was fucked, any way you cut it.

Until Macy said that.

She’d handed me fifty dollars from the cards she’d sold, took the entire stock I offered her, asked for a load more Christmas cards by Monday and finally, she’d suggested Etsy.

How much did people make on Etsy?

I could make cards, sell them online, drop them off at the post office during lunch.

I’d probably have to sell a ton of cards.

And thus make a ton of cards.

But I’d made ten since Wednesday.

And I might be able to do other stuff, like place markers or something.

I needed to get on Etsy and suss this out.

“And Carol, who owns Gifts ’n’ Goodies in Bellevue, told me to tell you to swing around,” Macy continued. “She was in this week and said she loved your stuff. Said she’d be thrilled to put some by the register. People are beginning to think it’s hip to buy local. It’s becoming a big thing, thank God.”

It’d take more in gas to drive to and from Bellevue than a few cards by her register would earn.

“I have a full-time job and a baby, Macy,” I reminded her. “I’d need that to be worth my while to drive all the way out to Bellevue.”

“All the way out to Bellevue” was maybe, at most, twenty miles.

This was probably one of the reasons Macy got that look on her face a lot of people got when they looked at me after I hit Matlock radar and within weeks my son had been kidnapped.

A look that was even worse than the look I’d catch Mom getting all those times she took us out, clean and dressed and groomed, but it wasn’t like you had to be a buyer at Bergdorf’s to know our clothes and shoes were cheap and our haircuts happened in our kitchen.

Macy snatched up a piece of scrap and offered, “I’ll jot down her number. Give her a call. I told her how popular they are. Maybe she’ll make a large order.”

I wondered how popular my cards actually were at Macy’s.

Or if she told them that poor Adeline Forrester girl who worked at Matlock Mart and had her baby kidnapped right out of the daycare center had made them, and people bought them because they felt sorry for me.

Right.

So they did.

And I made a buck fifty off some card I spent forty-five minutes on and they took it home and threw it in the trash or gave it to that cousin they didn’t know very much or like very well.

That buck fifty paid for over a half a gallon of gas.

Whatever.

She handed me Carol’s number, I took it on a muttered, “Thanks,” then promised, “I’ll be in Monday with more cards.”

“Thanks, Addie,” she replied. “Now give your little boy a snuggle for me.”

“Will do, Macy.”

I left, posthaste, mostly because I was in a foul mood, only had a half hour for lunch, of which probably twenty minutes was gone, and I needed to down the half-priced nearly expired salad I bought from the produce section and get back to my register.

I headed down the sidewalk, hunched into my jacket that was over my highly unattractive burgundy smock, which had yellow stitching over the breast that said Matlock Mart, mentally inventorying the bits and pieces and paint and cardstock I had and wondering if it was enough to start an Etsy store as I hustled back to work.

I’d crossed the street to the next block and was nearly to the store when I jerked to a halt after I heard barked at my side, “I said yo.”

I turned to see Toby halting beside me.

God, that beard.

Perry could not grow much but scruff.

He’d sell both his testicles to grow that thick, long beard.

It was trimmed into a fantastic wedge, done perfectly.

Hell, the sweeping mustache on its own was a thing of beauty.

Perry might even give his guitar for facial hair that awe-inspiring.

“So, what, now you’re ignoring me?” he asked, his question yanking me forcefully out of my beard trance.

“Sorry?” I asked back.

“Adeline, been callin’ your name since you left Macy’s.”

Oh.

I looked back at Macy’s, which was a block and a half away, a block and a half beyond that was where Gamble Garage stood.

I looked again to Toby.

“I didn’t hear you,” I told him.

“Bullshit,” he muttered, glowering at me.

Excuse me?

“I didn’t hear you, Toby.”

“You’re pissed at me,” he stated.

“No, I’m not,” I denied.

“And I’m shouting your name a half a dozen times, chasing you down the street, and you’re not pissed at me, you just didn’t hear me?”

“Yes, like I said, I didn’t hear you.”

“You were pissy when we hung up the other night.”