Her nails were glossy pink, her mouth pinched into that little smile she used whenever she knew she had an audience. “Gold digger,” she hissed. Then she spat on me.
It landed warm and wet on my cheek, just below the place her mother’s handprint was already blooming. For a second I couldn’t move. I heard the refrigerator humming. I heard Brett laugh under his breath. I heard one of the twins flutter low inside me, like a tiny fish startled in dark water. I wiped my face with the sleeve of Marcus’s old Army hoodie. “Please,” I said. My voice sounded thin, not like mine. “Just leave the grocery money. I need it for the shakes.” Brett pulled the bills from the envelope and fanned them out like he was counting chips at a casino. “Looks like a lot of shakes.”
“It’s one week,” I said. “The doctor said—” “The doctor,” Sandra cut in. “The doctor says whatever you pay him to say.” I stared at her. That was the thing about Sandra: she didn’t yell nonsense like a person out of control.
