Page 47 of Everything We Found

She quickly changed and met her mom outside. Lisa grasped her hand. “You look beautiful, darling.”

Nadia smiled, her heart full. This was the mom she remembered. Happy, loving, confident. The anger and sadness gone.

At the Goat, Catherine congratulated Lisa on her new job. Hugh seated them at a two top by the window.

“Order anything you want,” Lisa said. “We’re celebrating.”

“What are we celebrating now?” They’d already celebrated her new job with ice cream.

Her mom’s smile lit up her entire face. “Our mortgage has been paid off.”

“We’re not going to lose the house?” Nadia asked quietly, almost afraid to hope.

“We’re not going to lose the house.”

Nadia repeated the words just to make sure they were real. She pressed the menu to her forehead to hide the tears threatening to spill.

Lisa came around the table to hug her. “It’s okay to cry, darling. It’s been a terrible year, and I’ve been a terrible mother.”

“You haven’t been terrible,” she whispered into the menu.

“I’m going to disagree with you. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here tonight. You held us together. You got us through the year.”

Days later, Nadia ran into Thomas at Joe’s Diner, his college applications spread before him again. He erased and rewrote multiple fields.

“What are you doing?” she asked, unzipping her backpack.

“Changing my major to Economics and Supply Chain Management.”

She scrunched her nose. “What happened to Poli sci?” The CIA career track he’d been excited about.

“What of it? I’m still minoring in Spanish,” he answered, terse, as if that explained why he changed his mind.

“I’m just surprised.”

Thomas roughly erased another field.

“I think you’d be good at anything,” she said to cheer him up. He didn’t say anything back.

Angela stopped at their table and poured Nadia water. “Can I get you anything, hon?”

“A club sandwich,” she ordered with confidence. She had money now. Thanks to her mom’s new job at Donato Enterprises, Nadia could use her babysitting money on herself.

“Coming right up. You, Thomas? Can I get you anything else?”

“Coffee,” he answered curtly and refilled the fields he’d just erased.

Angela shot her a sympathetic look and Nadia shrugged her shoulders. Thomas wasn’t mad at her. But for someone who should be looking forward to his future—he’d once told Nadia he couldn’t wait to move out of his parents’ house—he didn’t seem overly enthused.

Nadia left him alone to finish his applications and opened her science textbook. Her lab worksheet was due tomorrow and she needed to finish drafting her experiment’s conclusion. But even as she tried to focus on her work, her attention kept drifting across the table to Thomas. He was keeping something from her.

16

NADIA

The guest room was on the ground floor, down a narrow hallway, separated from the office with the futon Thomas would be using by an adjoining Jack and Jill bathroom.

“Bathroom is here.” Thomas showed her the door beside the closet. “I’ll be sleeping through there.” He pointed at the open door at the other end of the seafoam-green tiled room. There was a combo bath/shower and dual sinks. “Hope you don’t mind we’re sharing.”