I divided the money from my apron into four piles.
Rent.
Electricity.
Bus fare.
Food.
The last pile contained twelve dollars and thirty-five cents.
I was thirty-one years old, working breakfast shifts at a downtown diner and evening events for a catering company. On good days, I stood for fourteen hours. On bad days, I smiled while customers snapped their fingers at me and complained that their coffee was not hot enough.
I had once planned to become a physical therapist.
Then my mother got sick.
I left college to care for her, collected debts I could not repay, and learned that dreams became very quiet when collection agencies called three times a day.
After she died, I kept working.
Not because I had somewhere to go.
Because stopping would have meant admitting there was nothing waiting for me.
The night I met Harrison, I had accepted an emergency catering shift at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
