“She’s right,” I say. “I didn’t have much to tell her other than what the debt collector told me. But I convinced her to come down to help. Tiffany cares about doing the right thing. And helping you is one of them.”
“Now you have a conscience,” my mom mutters.
“I always have. You taught me. Just like you taught me to love my family and do everything I can to make sure the people I love are taken care of. It isn’t easy facing you, it isn’t easy hearing you call me out for all the shit I’ve done, but I’ll do it a hundred times over if it means you’ll let me help you.”
She looks down. I see her Adam’s apple work over her surging emotions. When she meets my eyes, I see the tears shine in hers. She takes two hesitant steps forward and then puts her arms around me in a hug. I shut my eyes and hug her back. Hold her tight. My heart swells with the first scraps of motherly love that I’ve felt in years.
“Thank you, Declan,” she whispers against me.
I’ve missed this. I’ve been parched for her love for years. And now that I have even the smallest bit of it, I don’t want to let it go. I hug her for all I’m worth. Hug her for as long as I can hold on.
A hand touches my shoulder. Gentle. I look to the side and see Tiffany smiling at me. “Thank you,” I mouth to her.
She nods.
Then our hug breaks. And Tiffany clears her throat.
“Let’s start over, shall we?”
My mom nods.
“Mom, this is Tiffany Santos. She attended Torreon High, just like me. If you don’t remember her, she was valedictorian. She went to Stanford. She’s fucking smart. And she’s here to help, which is something that I am grateful for,” I say. Tiffany is beaming. She holds out her hand, and my mom takes it. “Tiffany, this is my mom: Eleanor Dunne.”
“Nice to meet you, Eleanor,” Tiffany says. “Now, we should get down to business because, regardless of what the problem is, the sooner we can get started on it, the better. These things never get better by waiting — there’s always interest, fees, and other punitive penalties. So, can you show us to where you have the loan paperwork?”
Everything about Tiffany right now impresses me. She’s assertive, confident; it’s like that stick up her ass has turned into a backbone.
Eleanor nods. “I can show you the paperwork. It’s upstairs in my office. Follow me.”
I slip my arm around Tiffany’s shoulder and let her lean into me as we head up the stairs. With her this close, I smell the lilac in her hair and my heart pounds with need. Halfway up the stairs, she stumbles and I reach out and pull her against me to steady her. Every curve in her body — the shape of her plump ass, her perky tits, her sensual lips — makes me moan with repressed desire.
She looks at me. Raises an eyebrow. There’s mirth in her eyes, but understanding, too. She knows what I’m feeling. “Are you all right, Blaze?”
I nod. Now is not the time to tell the nerdy girl from high school that she’s grown up to be the hottest chicks I’ve ever seen. “Fine. Been a rough few days and catching you like that pulled a muscle.”
After I steady myself, I help her climb the rest of the staircase.
“It’s this way,” my mom says. She leads us down the hall, to a room where the half-open door reveals a floor covered in papers; they’re strewn everywhere — some in boxes, some in piles, some spilling out of open file folders — and cover nearly every square inch of the floor. Through one point of the monstrously disorganized mess, I spy a corner of her old desk. It’s the same desk she used to work at most nights after coming home from the Torreon Community College, the place where she’d grade papers or prepare exams. Countless nights she spent there, slaving away for a teacher’s pay, just to keep the lights on.
“Mom, what happened?” I say.
“I just lost track of things a bit, that’s all,” she says, offhandedly. “I’m afraid I have had little time to organize things. All the papers from the bank are near the desk. They should be at the top of the pile, but I can’t remember which one.”
“It’s OK, Mrs. Dunne, we’ll find it,” Tiffany says.
There’s a gleam in her eye; something that looks close to excitement.
“Don’t worry about it, mom. Just go downstairs and relax for a bit. Tiffany and I got this.”
“I’ll be in the living room if you need me,” she says. Then she nods and makes her way back downstairs.
I wait until she’s well out of earshot.
“This is a fucking mess.”
“It is.”
“It could take days to sort this hoarding shit out. I don’t trust that those papers are where she says they are. They could be anywhere in there.”
“Well, we need to find them.”
I step into the room. Papers crinkle underfoot. A tower — no, a mountain — collapses to my right in an avalanche of printer paper.
“Fucking hell. Do we absolutely need this?”
“We do.”
Just looking at the Himalayas of paper in front of me makes my throat and fists clench in frustration. “How much time do you think we have?”
I don’t like the look that comes over Tiffany’s pretty face as she analyzes my question; it’s too grim. She speaks with a matter-of-fact voice, like a cop reading the death toll off an incident report or a judge handing out a sentence. “If they’re already calling you — not her, you
