and then I can upload everything via digital documents and send it on its way.
Thank God.
I am so tired that it takes me a good minute to remember where my camera is on my phone, and I’m just snapping the first photo when a call comes in. My mom’s number pops up on the caller ID, and I let out a groan. No. Just no. After everything else I dealt with in the last twelve hours, there is no way I can deal with her, too.
I swipe Decline and head back inside, only to realize that my mom’s voice—her shouting “Mallory! Mallory!”—is coming from my phone.
Damn it! I must have swiped Accept instead. All the bleach fumes have clearly gotten to me.
I’m so tempted to hang up and pretend that I have no idea she called, but it’s too late. My mom has a special gift for torture, and if she thinks I am deliberately ignoring a phone call from her, she will absolutely find a way to make me suffer for a long time to come.
With that cheery little thought from hell in my head, I do the only thing I can do. I bring the phone to my ear and tell a fib. “Sorry, Mom. I dropped the phone. How are you?”
She sighs heavily. “You always were clumsy. It used to drive me to distraction when you were younger. I know it bothers Karl, too.”
Yeah, well, Karl can trip and fall over every one of the no more fucks I have to give about that.
“Look, today’s not really a great day to expect me to care what Karl thinks, Mom, so…”
“What happened?” she asks. “What did you do now?”
“What did I do?” I can’t believe what she just said. “Are you serious?”
“Karl is an eminently practical man. If he’s upset, it only stands to reason that you did something to upset him.”
At this point, I should be worried that my eyebrows are going to merge with my hairline.
“You can’t actually believe that, right?” I’m ready to hang up right now, but I just don’t have the spoons to deal with the shit she’ll heap on me if I do. “Don’t you want to know what he did to upset me?”
She sighs, the sound loud and long-suffering, and it gets my back up like nothing else can. “What did he do, Mallory?”
“You mean besides get his girlfriend pregnant?” I say, dropping the news like a live grenade. “And from the size of her, he didn’t even wait until I was out the door to do it.”
My mother doesn’t answer. In fact, she’s silent for so long that I pull the phone away from my ear to make sure we weren’t disconnected. She’s still there, according to the call timer that just keeps ticking away. Still, she doesn’t say anything. Finally, I break because I can’t deal with the silence—one of her favorite torture techniques—anymore. “Mom?”
“Maybe if you apologized, Mallory.”
“For what?” I nearly choke on the indignation that swells inside me. “He cheated on me, Mom. He got his girlfriend pregnant while we were still together. How is any of that my fault?”
She makes a tut-tut sound. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m simply saying that maybe if you took better care of yourself, none of this would have happened.”
The fire of a thousand suns bursts out in my chest. What. The. Ever. Loving. Hell. “Maybe if I took better care—”
“I was always after you to let me take you to the spa with me,” she says, her tone so calm it borders on creepy. “A man has the right to expect his wife to be well-groomed.”
“I’m not a troll, Mother. I just didn’t add blond streaks to my hair or wear fake nails.”
“Or get facials to take care of your skin. And you almost never go to the gym—”
“Our building had a heated pool! I did laps three times a week.”
She scoffs. “It’s not the same as a good cardio workout.”
“Oh my God!” I have to clench my fists to keep from tearing my hair out or throwing my phone across the room when I can’t afford to replace it. “Swimming is literally one of the best cardio workouts there is. Plus, it uses every muscle in your body!”
“But it dries out your hair.” She lowers her voice as if sharing the deepest secret. “And you know how yours likes to frizz at the best of times.”
I am so tired that angry tears burn the backs of my