The Uber pulled away from the curb at the exact moment my fingers slipped on the third crate of wine. The box hit the frozen curb with a crack that rattled up my arms and into my teeth. Nana Rose’s house glowed behind me, every window a rectangle of warm yellow light against the November dark, but out here the wind knifed straight through my coat like it had a personal vendetta.
I crouched and checked the bottles. None of them had broken. Thank God.
Every single one cost more than I’d paid myself in the last month. “Mia, sweetheart. Why on earth did you take a rideshare?”
I looked up.
Nana Rose stood in the doorway wrapped in a cream cashmere shawl that probably cost more than my monthly studio rent. Her face was puzzled, almost worried, and that worry punched straight into something loose and tender in my chest. “What happened to the Volvo V60 I bought you?”
She stepped out onto the porch, frowning at the taillights disappearing down Maple Avenue.
“You need that wagon for the… papers.”
Papers. She always called them that, like I was a kid on a bike route, not the owner of Allen Suite, a small business that had just landed a twenty-five-thousand-dollar contract with a senator’s daughter. But that soft, affectionate tone still made my throat go tight.
My mouth opened. And closed. The truth sat right there, ready to spill.
Oh, Nana, Mom let Kayla drive it because she “needed” it for some sorority reveal week—and she didn’t ask me. “She needed a carriage for her little reveal week,” my mother’s voice drifted through the open door before I could get any words out. She appeared behind Nana, a glass of white wine catching the porch light in her hand.
Chardonnay. Probably glass number three. Her smile was effortless and practiced, the one she wore at church fundraisers.
“She had so many gift baskets to transport,” Mom went on, tilting her head toward me, still smiling. “And it’s not like Mia uses it that much anyway.”
The cold spike in my gut had nothing to do with the November wind. She was lying.
The words jammed in my throat. I stood there on the bottom step, hugging a two-hundred-dollar crate of wine, the truth lying between us like something dead. Kayla didn’t need the car for a sorority event.
Kayla wanted the car because she asked for it and Mom said yes without even checking with me. Like always. Three weeks.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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