Free Eight Days a Week by Amber L. Johnson

 
    Wrapping the towel around my waist, I stepped out of the tub and brushed by her. “You can talk while I finish packing.”
    There was a choked gasp from behind me, and she hurried to my side. “You’re leaving?”
    “Did you expect me to stay? You lied to me.” I yanked open the top of my suitcase and grabbed a pair of jeans. After pulling them on, I dropped the towel to the floor and turned to face her. “Talk or leave.”
    Her face turned bright red. “You want to know about the kids’ parents? How they died and left me to be the caretaker?”
    I reached for my hair, and my hand froze midair. With a solemn nod, I sat on the edge of the bed. “Yes. Yes to all of it.”
    “We don’t ever talk about it.”
    “Then I can’t help you.”
    She sank to the floor, and I maintained my position, fighting the urge to comfort her until she explained herself.
    She took a deep breath.  
    Then another.
    “I have to tell you about a few things first so you understand how all of this became what it is.”
    “I can keep up.”
    “Right. Of course you can. Here’s the rundown. I grew up a few miles from here. My dad was a truck driver, and he died on the road when I was eight. Massive ten-car pileup.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Thanks. So it was just me and my mom. She had me when she was right out of high school, and after my dad died, she kind of lost it. She figured out just how little she had without him. No college education. No income. Nothing to call her own, except me.
    “She pushed me to be better. Said I needed to be smarter and more independent so I wouldn’t have to depend on anyone. I was shoved into all of these honors classes, and she would drill into my brain that I needed to study and get a good job, I needed to be a career woman and make my own money. Which made me laugh even then, because she remarried less than two years later after meeting Kevin in an AOL chat room or something.”
    I tried to block the mental pictures of a small, sad, broken, little eight-year-old Gwen losing her father and then having him replaced so fast. I was beginning to hate Debra. But I put on my stone face and said, “What does this have to do with Bree and Brady’s parents?”
    “I’m getting to that,” Gwen said, fidgeting with her hands. “With my new stepdad came new friends. And that’s how I met Bryan Pope. His mom became my mom’s best friend. He was a year older than me, but we were inseparable. He never had a dad, so we bonded over being raised without one. Bryan was kind of my everything. He was like a brother-dad.” She chuckled. “He was the first guy to tell me I was pretty. The first one to say he loved me.” Her eyes lifted to mine. “He was probably the only guy to ever mean it, too. Besides my dad.”
    I swallowed back a protest. There was something seriously wrong with Gwen having been told she was beautiful only by her dad and this Bryan guy.
    “By the time I got to high school, Bryan and I were in all of the same classes because of my fast tracking. He walked me to and from school and protected me from bullies. Bryan wanted me to have fun, and he made sure I did. Then, during our junior year, Anna Lawrence moved to town, and Bryan fell in love with her. She was my exact opposite—blond and bubbly, personality for days. Bubble-gum pink-princess Barbie.” She smiled. “I loved her, too. They were my best friends.”
    She shook her head as if to clear it. “They got married out of high school, and Anna got pregnant with Bree. It was amazing . . . I’d never seen the kind of love they had as a family. I came home from college on the weekends to help them out. When Bree was born, I was the first to hold her, outside her parents. She stole my heart, and I never got it back.” Her eyes glazed over. “We were all a big happy family. It was perfect.”
    I felt a stinging behind my eyes, thinking of my own family. Perfect had been light years from what it had been like, and despite sensing