Oops, Wrong Bride? Fine. No Wedding. novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Help in the Back Again
Shelby stood up off the step and wiped her palms on her jeans.
She looked at the sign over our heads.
"You put it back," she said.
"It was always going back."
The crew had gone quiet on the ladder. Hayes's arm stayed around my waist.
Shelby didn't look at him. She didn't look at anyone but me.
"I need a job," she said.
I waited for the joke.
There wasn't one.
"The sponsors pulled out after the TV thing. All of them. The pink car was leased in Daddy's name, and he stopped paying." She laughed, a thin awful sound. "Trey's lawyer says I don't get anything, because there was never anything. I'm sleeping in my old room at Mama's. She has to step over my suitcase to get to her sewing machine."
"Ask Daddy."
"Daddy's selling his condo." She swallowed. "He won't pick up. It's the first time in eleven years he hasn't picked up."
"I can wash pans," Shelby said. "I can do the register. I'll do help in the back. I'll do anything."
There it was.
Help in the back.
Everyone on that sidewalk heard it.
Emmy had just pulled up in her hatchback, and she got out very slowly with her mouth open.
"No," I said.
Shelby flinched.
"That's it? Just no?"
"Just no. You don't get to work in my mother's kitchen, Shelby. Not in the front. Not in the back."
Her chin wobbled. The dent in it, my father's dent.
She nodded and turned to go.
"Wait," I said.
She stopped.
"Mama paid for your dance lessons. Twelve years of them."
"I know that now. Thanks for the reminder."
"I'm going to pay for one thing. One. The culinary program at the community college, two semesters. I'll pay the school directly. Not you."
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