bare-bellied. He held up his middle finger to whoever was taking the picture. The man looked a helluva lot like Luis, Teresa’s ex-husband, but the picture had been taken twenty years ago. Maybe the stance or the crude gesture was what reminded her of him, and not so much the facial features.
She laid the picture aside and brought out a faded pink satin ribbon. Angel had tied that around Teresa’s hair when she enrolled her in kindergarten. That was the last day Teresa had ever felt pretty.
“What’s that all about?” Kayla asked from the doorway.
Kayla’s voice startled Teresa so badly that she felt an adrenaline rush. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I didn’t,” Kayla said. “I came up the stairs, went to the bathroom, and saw you standing near the bed like a statue. Where did you get all that stuff anyway?”
“It’s personal stuff that I’ve kept.” She put the ribbon and the picture back in the box.
“I didn’t ever have much worth keeping, but I did keep a notebook that Miss Janie gave me to write down my thoughts.” Kayla shrugged. “But then you—”
Teresa put up a palm. “Don’t start that crap about me havin’ a better life than you. We all had our burdens to carry, and mine wasn’t a bit lighter than yours.”
“You don’t know everything about my life.” Kayla took a step into the bedroom.
“And you don’t know much of anything about mine,” Teresa told her. “But we need to get along as best we can for Miss Janie’s sake now.”
“As long as you don’t try to lord it over me, I’ll give it a try,” Kayla said.
“If you don’t knock that chip off your shoulder soon, I’m going to really do it for you,” Teresa threatened.
Kayla gave her foster sister the evil eye. “Bring it on, big girl.”
Teresa sat down in the rocking chair. “Girl, you ain’t had it a bit worse than I have. Luis refused to let me continue in college. He said that it took two people to make a living, and I could hustle my butt out there and find a job. When I came home and told him I’d gotten a job cleaning at the nursing home but I had to work the three-to-eleven shifts, he didn’t even care about that. But then why should he? That gave him time to come home from his day job, clean up, and go out with his buddies to drink beer and chase other women. So don’t go pouting thinkin’ you had it so rough.”
“At least Luis worked.” Kayla sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Denver was a spoiled brat,” Teresa said. “I never could see why you were attracted to him.”
“He told me I was pretty,” Kayla whispered. “And we had sex when I was fifteen. After that, he was kind of nice to me at school. It’s not easy to never fit in anywhere. Denver gave me a place, even if I was only on the fringes.”
“Miss Janie didn’t let us date until we were sixteen,” Teresa said. “And what do you mean by kind of nice?”
“As long as I was his booty call, he let me hang out with him and our friends, and he was so mean that no one dared bully me after that.” Kayla kept her eyes on the memory box and didn’t look at Teresa. “His folks kicked him out about that time, and he lived with some of his worthless friends until we graduated. The rest is history. We were going to set the world on fire. He had a car, and I had a few dollars saved from my allowance.”
“Then you found out that it took more than that to blaze a trail in the world, right?” Teresa agreed. “Luis and I were going to live in a mansion by the time we were married ten years. We were going to have a family, and everything was going to be perfect.”
“You got it.” Kayla almost smiled. “But guess what? Perfect ain’t anything but a pipe dream. Why didn’t y’all have kids?”
“I’d gotten on the pill when I went to college, and after his first affair, I didn’t miss a single one. I even set an alarm on my phone to remind me that it was time to take it,” Teresa replied. “How about you?”
“He said if I got pregnant, then I could figure out how to pay for an abortion. He didn’t want snotty-nosed kids—his words, not mine—running around his feet. I