Mom Cooked Only for Bella, So I Found My Real Mother novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Tasting Line

By nine that same morning I had a hairnet on and a job application in my hand.

Luke had slid it across the break room table without a word and handed me a pen.

"Pay is fifteen an hour," he said. "Odette hires, not me. She's driving back from a supplier in Baton Rouge. But I can put you on the bottling line today and she'll sign off when she's in."

"Who's Odette?"

"The boss. Landry is her name, her father's name, and the sauce is her mother's recipe."

He said it with plain respect.

I wrote my name at the top of the form.

Under "emergency contact" I stopped.

I wrote Luke's number, because I had no one else.

My phone buzzed against the table.

It was Mom, the fourteenth message since midnight.

I didn't want to open it, but I did.

"I called McNeese the minute they opened. I told them you aren't enrolling this fall. You will not be a student until you are sorry."

I read it slowly, twice.

My scholarship, my room, my whole September.

She had taken it before breakfast.

Luke was watching me over his coffee.

"Bad news?"

"My mom just cancelled my college."

"Can she do that?"

"She paid the deposit. I never thought about whose name was on it."

"Then you'll fix it," he said, plainly. "Today you work. Tomorrow you call the school. You're an adult, they'll listen to you."

I tucked the phone away.

The bottling line was a long steel table, three belts and a dozen workers.

Everyone in the room had burns on their hands, the same small red marks Luke had.

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