Molly asked when the first dance was announced.
“Just a little longer, sweetie. Soon.”
They watched as David and Kira swayed to a slow song. They made a beautiful couple: he tall and dark, she tall and fair. Like in the movies. But to Molly, something about this movie felt wrong. Something fake, like a Christmas ornament that’s shiny on the outside but hollow within. When the dance ended, David kissed Kira, and everyone applauded. Vera didn’t clap. She was looking off to the side, at a window where the sky was growing dark.
“Let’s go,” she said at last. “It’s time.”
After the wedding, things changed. David stopped coming by. Not all at once, but gradually. First it was once a week, then once every two weeks, then not at all. Vera said it was normal; he had a family now, a wife, new responsibilities. But Molly could see that her mom was sad, even though she tried to hide it.
The job, however, remained. Every day, Vera went to the company’s construction sites, checked on the workers’ health, and filed her reports. She liked the work; that much was clear. She told stories about the people she treated, funny anecdotes about a burly construction worker who was so afraid of needles he fainted at the sight of a syringe.
But one evening, Vera came home looking different. Her face was gray, her hands were trembling, and her eyes were red.
“What happened?” Molly asked, scared.
“Nothing, sweetie. Just a… a long day.”
But Molly knew it wasn’t just a long day. Something bad had happened. And she was right. A week later, Vera lost her job. She didn’t say anything at first, pretending for a few days that everything was fine, leaving in the morning and coming back in the evening. But then Molly found her in the kitchen, crying over a cup of cold tea, and the truth came out.
“I was fired,” Vera said.
“For what?”
“They said I stole medication. Painkillers. They said they found them in my locker.”
“But you didn’t steal them!”
“Of course not. Someone planted them. But I can’t prove it.”
Molly didn’t understand. Who would plant drugs in her mom’s locker? Why? The answer came a few days later, when David called. Molly overheard the conversation; her mom hadn’t closed the door.
“Vera, I’m so sorry. I tried to look into it, but… the evidence is against you. Security footage, testimony from colleagues…” His voice was guilty, confused. “I don’t believe you did it, but my hands are tied. Kira… she’s insisting. She says we can’t have someone with that kind of reputation at the company.”
Kira… of course, it was Kira. Molly remembered her cold eyes at the wedding, the calculating way she’d looked at her mom. She had orchestrated the whole thing.
“The apartment… you can stay in the apartment,” David continued. “It’s the least I can do. And I’ll try to find you another job, through some contacts.”
“Don’t bother,” Vera said. Her voice was calm, dead. “Thank you for everything, David. We’ll be fine.”
She hung up the phone and sat motionless for a long time, staring at the wall. Molly came up and hugged her from behind, burying her face in her mom’s hair.
“Mom…”
“What is it, sweetie?”
“Are we really going to be fine?”
Vera turned, took Molly’s face in her hands, and looked her in the eyes.
“Yes. We always have been, and we will be now. We’re a team, remember?”
“I remember.”
They sat like that, holding each other, until it got dark outside. Then Vera stood up, wiped her eyes, and said:
“All right. Enough moping. Tomorrow, we start looking for a new job. But tonight, we’re having ice cream. You in?”
“I’m in.”
The ice cream was from the corner store, vanilla with chocolate chips. But to Molly, it tasted like the best ice cream in the world.
Vera didn’t find a new job for a month. It wasn’t as good as the last one—back at a clinic, back to long shifts and low pay. But it was something. They didn’t lose the apartment; David kept his word. But Vera felt trapped there, as if every wall reminded her of what had happened.
“Maybe we should move,” she said one day.
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. Find something smaller. Something that’s ours, not a gift.”
Molly understood. She felt uncomfortable in the apartment now, too, knowing where it came from. It was like the things around them weren’t quite real, just props in a play that had ended. But moving cost money, and they had none. So they stayed.
Summer passed, and fall began. Molly started third grade, Vera worked, and life fell into a kind of routine—not as happy as before, but bearable. They learned not to talk about David, or Kira, or any of it. It was as if it had happened to someone else, in another life.
Then, at the end of October, Vera got sick. At first, it was just a cough—she’d caught a cold at work, nothing serious. Then came a fever that wouldn’t break. Then a weakness so profound she couldn’t get out of bed.
“Call an ambulance,” she asked Molly, her voice a hoarse whisper.
Molly called. The paramedics came, examined her, and shook their heads.
“She needs to go to the hospital,” one of them, an older man with a mustache, said. “Looks like pneumonia, a bad case.”
Vera was carried out on a stretcher, pale, her eyes closed. Molly stood beside her, holding her hand until the ambulance doors shut.
“Can I go with her?”
Comments are closed.