He Gave Me Fifty Dollars to Live, I Left Him with Nothing novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Aquarium

Roz's POV

Maisie sat at the cottage table in her pajamas with her sketchbook open and her pencil behind her ear.

I had come in with Tobias's coat still on my shoulders, and she looked at it, and at him, and at me.

She said nothing.

She picked up her pencil.

"I decided about Friday," she said.

"Okay."

"I want to go."

I sat down across from her.

"You don't have to, baby. You can say no, and we won't."

"I know." She drew a line, rubbed it out. "I want him to say it to my face."

"Say what?"

"That it was my money." Her chin came up. "Whitney told me. She said it in the hall at court. She said, It was yours, and I'm sorry, and I'm a bad person."

"She said that to you?"

"The man in the gray coat let her. She cried." Maisie shrugged one shoulder. "I told her I'd think about it."

"About what?"

"Whether she's all bad." She looked down. "I'm still mad."

"You're allowed."

"I know. I'm nine."

Tobias made a sound and turned it into a cough.

Maisie squinted at him.

"Are you going to marry my mom?"

"Maisie," I said.

"It's a normal question."

"Ask me in a month," Tobias said, and he was red to the ears.

"Okay."

She went back to drawing, satisfied, and I put my face in my good hand.

Thursday was the aquarium.

The class had been promised it all fall, and the teacher who had stood next to me in the pick-up line had held the date open.

I signed up as a chaperone.

At the school door I handed her an envelope with the trip fee in it.

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