was breaking the law, earning big from gun running and murder for hire. Enough for us to own this house with a mortgage so small we’d paid it off by the time Jack entered elementary school. Enough for me to be a stay-at-home mom, puttering away at ideas and stories that, of course, wouldn’t ever see the light of day.
Sure, we hadn’t had enough for me to buy designer handbags like Amy and Gwen, but that was fine with me. I considered luxury to be having a home that I loved, one that my children could grow up in, and the college funds that had been accumulating throughout the years. To me, luxury was the fact that we’d never worried about bills, had two cars in addition to Ranger’s Harley, and we could even take a few vacations a year, with and without the kids.
There were some lean years, of course, but those were time I’d budgeted for. Being an Old Lady for as long as I had been, I’d known that we’d need a little buffer. Working as an outlaw in a motorcycle club wasn’t exactly steady, reliable money.
So through the lean years, the buffer depleted. But once the garage started earning good money and the club started to work on more legitimate ventures, the buffer got large and healthy again.
We’d taken the kids camping and to Disneyland, though, Ranger fucking hated it. He did it for his little girl, who was obsessed with princesses, and he’d made sure to treat her like one every day.
We’d had a trip to Hawaii planned for later this week. Of course, we weren’t going now since there was no we.
Ranger’s funeral expenses had been covered by the club. They had funds allocated for those kinds of things. Of course they did. Not that they’d had to dip into them for a while. And then there was the fact that as a widow, I got a small cut of whatever they made. For life.
They looked out for the families of their fallen members.
I wasn’t about to turn it down—not that anyone would let me—not if it helped put my kids through college or be able to backpack through Europe if they didn’t want to go to college. Not if I could use it for all the expenses that came with having a growing girl and boy who wouldn’t have a father. No. I wasn’t about to turn down anything. My pride was cheap.
But even with all that, covering our finances would be a stretch. Technically, I could make things work the way they were, but only if I wanted to constantly worry about money and have my kids go without things like holidays and school trips. Since they were already going to have to be without their father for the rest of their lives, I wasn’t about to deny them anything else.
I had enough to cover what I estimated would be another year at the very most. Six months would be ideal, so I’d still have a good buffer for the worst-case scenario. I’d need to find a job.
I was focusing on one thing at a time, though, and today I was focusing on the fact that the house was clean and my kids were happily playing in the backyard together. I’d only had to breakup one squabble, which was some kind of record. As well as Jack and Lily got along, they were still brother and sister with very different personalities.
Eventually they’d come in, needing to be bathed and fed. But it was Saturday and one of our routines was having takeout every Saturday night. Tonight was Lily’s turn to choose, so we’d likely be having Indian. My little girl was obsessed with trying as many different foods as she could. Amber was small, but it had a surprising variety of different restaurants, consistently growing as our small corner of paradise continued to get discovered my tourists and people looking to relocate to a town in California with affordable houses.
It was almost three in the afternoon, probably another hour until I could crack open a beer or bottle of wine and not hate myself.
I’d limited how much I drank while the kids were awake but indulged slightly more once they were asleep. Saturday was also the night I routinely let myself get a little bit tipsy. That combined with some Valium made it so I was able to get a small amount of sleep at least once a week.
Only Saturdays, though. I