Page 68 of You've Got Hate Mail
That actually tracks.
Wonder what new food Pip’s sending over now that I haven’t found yet.
Cricket sucks in a breath that she seems to draw from her toes. “If you—if you want—I could sit with her whenever you’re busy. Like mornings. Or you can send her down when you’re cooking dinner. Or I can take the cat when you don’t want them together unsupervised. Not liketake your cattake your cat. Just like, cat-sit. I—I really like the little apartment, and I’m grateful that you’re letting me stay there, so if I can help, if I can repay the favor, I’d like to.”
Mabel’s always had one rule for living here.
We help each other out to the best of our abilities, and we respect that not everyone can be one hundred percent every single day.
I ask for help with Lav—too much lately, but fuck, it’s hard enough being a single parent when my kidisn’tgetting kicked out of summer camp—and I give back with the skills I learned from my dad and occasionally playing paramedic.
Cricket’s offering to do the same.
To live up to what’s asked in exchange for being here.
New residents get grace to work through their shit before they’re asked to take a full load, but most people don’t last longenough to want full-time chores and responsibilities the way Mabel, Ginny, and Samantha and Olivia do.
I think Cricket’s going to be a long-timer.
Not just because it’s been a couple years since we added long-timers. Samantha and Olivia are a little newer than me, and I’ve been here over three years.
It’s a gut feeling.
And that annoys me.
I don’t want to feel responsible for her, but I don’t know how to shut it off, and if she’s here forever—then I’m going to feel responsible for her forever.
But if she can help with Lav?
My handful of an unpredictable daughter?
Who already adores Cricket, probably because they’re both chaos gremlins?
Might as well make that strawberry lemonade.
“You don’t have to volunteer to do everything,” I tell her.
“I like to stay busy.” She laughs a humorless laugh. “Ginny says it’s probably a trauma response from all of the lessons I got in childhood about having to work harder to be as good as I was always told my sisters were when they were my age. But I do. I like to be busy. Especially if it’s something that makes me feel like I’m not a complete fuckup at being an adult.”
“You’re not a complete fuckup.”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
“Lavender’s sneaky.”
“Clearly, if she’s getting food to the cat without you knowing.”
“Appreciate that reminder of my failures.”
“Are you kidding? You’re like, the most patient man I’ve ever met in my life. Lavender’s lucky to have you. But no one’s perfect, and seeing that you might still need some help makes you less intimidating.”
I file that away to ponder later.
Probably at three a.m. when I wake up and can’t get back to sleep and my brain starts rolling on all of the stress in my life.
I have good parents.
My in-laws are leaving us alone, if you don’t count the emails and voicemails that come in like clockwork from my mother-in-law, demanding to see Lav, which I’ve learned to archive in case they’re needed later, but mostly ignore.
