Free Odd Mom Out by Jane Porter Page A

Her parents wouldn’t wire her any cash (they were furious she’d spent a year screwing around Europe instead of going to law school after graduating from Stanford), so she took a job for minimum wage making beds at a Budapest luxury hotel and ended up being spotted by a European modeling agent, who convinced her she could find work on the catwalks in Milan. It wasn’t long before she appeared in Italian
Vogue,
and then she was back in the United States commanding an impressive fee.
    These are my friends, these are the people I admire—courageous, creative, risk-taking women. Shey’s married with kids, Tits was married briefly and there weren’t kids, which is a good thing since her journalist husband died covering the war in the Middle East just months after their honeymoon. Both my friends adore Eva and supported me in my decision to become a single mom. Shey even drove me to the fertility clinic for the artificial insemination. As thanks for her help and support, I made Shey, a mother of three, Eva’s godmother.
    I’m hoping Shey will know what I should do about Eva now.
    It doesn’t take Eva and me more than five minutes to throw our swimsuits, tennis shoes, and change of clothes into an overnight bag. Orcas Island, like the rest of the San Juan Islands, is casual, sporty, and not very developed, meaning there’s not much to do on the islands but play on the beach or go for a bike ride, but people don’t go to the islands for the activity. They go for the lack of it.
    Happily, there’s no traffic on the 520 bridge, and we arrive at the seaplane terminal at Lake Union with time to spare.
    One of the best parts of living in Seattle is Puget Sound, with its endless islands, islets, and waterways. Usually we take one of the ferries to the islands, so flying on the seaplane is extra exciting.
    There’s nothing quite like taking off from the water and then flying low enough so you can see virtually everything. The world from the seaplane isn’t like the world from a Boeing jet. Life below still seems so close, yet the colors just pop—stunning sapphire blue, rich emerald green, scattered fields of brown, tan, and gold.
    Eva’s glued to her window, and I’m sinking into my seat, taking some deep, calming breaths, thinking that Shey’s call was divine intervention.
    God knew I needed some help.
    “I heard what they said,” Eva suddenly says in a soft voice.
    My body tenses immediately. I long to reach out and touch Eva, but at the moment I don’t think she’d welcome it. She’s in such a strange place now. Maybe all fourth graders go through this—angry, wistful, confused.
    Finally she turns to look at me, and her expression is shuttered. “I heard what Jemma’s mom said. About me annoying Jemma by being her shadow. Following her everywhere.”
    That explains Eva’s strange color when she left the Young house. I thought she looked shocked. Bruised. “Mrs. Young didn’t mean anything by it. She was just talking, just being silly.”
    “But I heard what they said about you, too. I heard how they thought we didn’t have any money and that maybe it’s too expensive for us here.”
    I start to protest, thinking she’s misunderstood them, but stop myself. Maybe she hasn’t misunderstood. Maybe she’s understood them better than me.
    She looks at me with wide, pain-darkened eyes. “But we’re not poor, are we?”
    “No.”
    “And we have an old truck instead of a nice new car because . . . ?”
    “It’s a classic. It’s a beautiful truck and a piece of history.” I reach out and lightly smooth back the hair from her brow. “And driving it is fun. I have fun in it. I feel . . . pretty. Sexy.”
    “
Sexy?
”
    I shrug and make a face. “Pretty is different for every woman. Mrs. Young likes designer clothes, Gucci, Prada, Ralph Lauren. I like vintage stuff. I like things that don’t match, that have a masculine edge, things that contradict standardized ideas of beauty.”
    “But you’re so