I Queued Three Hours for Her, But They Didn't Wait Three Minutes for Me novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Without the Drops

My mother came on Wednesday evening, and she brought Dani.

I heard them on the stairs of my coworker's building, my mother's quick little steps and Dani's slower ones.

I opened the door before they could knock.

My mother stood in the hall with a foil pan of lasagna, and her face crumpled the moment she saw my room.

The mattress on the floor.

The window onto the brick wall.

My three boxes, still taped.

"Oh, Bee," she said. "Oh, honey."

"It's fine, Mom. It has a door."

"You're sleeping on the floor."

"I'm sleeping fine."

Dani stood slightly behind her in a pale pink cardigan and a little silver necklace.

Her eyes were already red.

She held her hands in front of her, and she looked sorry in a way that could have won an award.

"I made her come," my mother said, pushing past me to put the lasagna on the windowsill. "Your father's too proud to come himself, and Dani's been crying for three days."

"I'm so sorry, Bee," Dani said. "I didn't mean for any of it. I never wanted you to leave."

I said nothing.

"Your father is trying," my mother said. "He just doesn't know how to say it. He's asked me to invite you to Christmas Eve."

"Has he."

"Six o'clock. The whole family. Your great-uncle's coming from Fresno." She took my hand in both of hers. "He says if you sit at that table, and make peace with your cousin, he'll open the safe. He'll give you your passport. That's all we want, Bee. For everyone to be together."

I looked at my mother's hands.

They were a little rough, with the nails cut short, the hands of a woman who had cooked for four people for thirty years and never been thanked.

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