It was nearly eleven o'clock before Maura arrived home from work. She entered through the front door and dropped her backpack with a heavy thud, shucking her sneakers on the mat next to a growing collection of shoes. "Mom?" she called out softly, just in case her mother had already gone to bed, even though she always waited up.

"In here," came her mother's tired reply.

Maura pulled the band from her hair as she made her way down the hallway toward the kitchen, massaging the tension from her neck and temples. "Hey," she said, not bothering to stifle her yawn.

Her mother stood at the stove staring at a pot of water, but she turned and gave Maura a ghost of a smile. She was still wearing the uniform she wore to clean offices in the evening, after her regular nine-to-five shift at the bank where she was a manager. Dark smudges of exhaustion left shadows under her eyes, while wisps of dirty blonde hair escaped the stumpy ponytail at the nape of her neck. Maura tried not to notice the darker threads of grey twined throughout.

"You're home later than usual," her mother said. "I got home and the house was dark."

"I asked Brian to change my hours."

"Oh?"

Maura collapsed into one of the chairs. Her entire body ached from being at school all day and on her feet for the past several hours. She winced as she stretched her legs in front of her.

"Tea?" her mother offered. "I've got chamomile. Or that peppermint you like?"

"No, thanks. I'm good."

"So why did you ask Brian to change your hours?" her mother asked as she held the teapot under the tap and turned on the water.

Maura made a face. "My English teacher decided to be a bi˗˗"

"Hey now," her mother said, cutting her off.

Maura rolled her eyes. "She assigned us a year-end project . . . as if we don't have enough to do already."

"Yuck. My sympathies."

"Worse, we have to work with a partner."

Her mother laughed. "And I know how much you love that."

"I'll get stuck doing all the work myself. Like always. My partner is pretty much useless."

Her mother turned to her. "You just need to learn to delegate. It can be very liberating, you know."

"And risk ruining my GPA? I don't think so."

Her mother shook her head. "A good GPA isn't everything. What does this English project have to do with your job, anyway?" she asked as she placed the teapot on a burner and turned on the gas.

Maura pulled the sugar bowl toward her and began drawing shapes in the mound of white crystals with the tip of the spoon. "The only time I can work on this asinine project is before or after school, and trying to get anyone to meet in the morning is impossible. I asked Brian if I could start an hour late on the days I'm scheduled to go in, but that means I have to stay an hour late to make up the time."

"You shouldn't even be working," her mother said. "You should be concentrating on school and having fun with your friends. That's your job."

"It's not a big deal, Mom. Besides, who else is going to pay to fix my car?"

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, hanging in the air like an accusation. Her mother turned away, but not before Maura saw the hurt on her face. Her mother had scrimped and saved to buy her a car as a surprise for her seventeenth birthday last summer, probably to overcompensate for her dad running off, but whatever. Although the car needed a new paint job, the AC didn't work, and it tended to break down just to spite her, it meant freedom.

"I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean—"

"Don't worry about it," she interrupted. "I know it's not the greatest car. Want some Ramen?"

"Sure," Maura said. And then, to change the subject: "When did you get home?"

"About five minutes before you did."

"I thought you were off tonight."

"I was, but one of the girls called in sick. I don't mind the extra hours. Now I can afford to buy you that prom dress you've had your eye on."

"You don't have to buy me a dress, Mom," she said, feeling even worse for her comment. "I can buy it myself. It's not like I have a date, anyway. I probably won't go."

Her mother dropped two dried blocks of noodles into the boiling water and then shook in the packets of seasoning. "I'm sure someone will ask you. Or maybe you could ask someone. You're a modern woman, right?"

Maura pushed away the sugar bowl and continued to sit there, too tired even to bend over and peel off her socks. She needed to change out of her uniform, which smelled perpetually of theater popcorn, and shower away the day's grime. Sitting seemed much easier, though, and after a few minutes, her mother placed a bowl of steaming soup on the table in front of her, along with a plate of sliced apples.

"It's hot," she cautioned. "Let it cool before you eat it."

"You always say that." She got up intending to take her dinner to her room where she could work on homework while she ate like she usually did.

"Sit down," her mother said, surprising her. "We need to talk."

Maura stared at her. "Uh-oh."

Experience said we need to talk meant the cat had been hit by a car, or they couldn't take a vacation because there were too many bills, or Christmas was going to be especially sparse.

Or that her father had mysteriously disappeared.

Her mother sat down with her Ramen. She folded her hands on the table. "I've been putting this off for far too long."

"Putting what off?" Maura said, wrapping her hands around the bowl even tighter to stop their sudden shaking. The heat from the soup was hot enough to burn, but she barely felt it.

Her mother didn't answer right away, and she didn't meet Maura's eyes when she did. "I've decided to put the house on the market."

At first, Maura thought she had misunderstood. "You . . . want to sell our home?"

"I've held on to it for much longer than I should have," she said. "The mortgage is just too much without your dad's income. We need to downsize."

"But this is our home," Maura said. "We can't just pick up and move."

Her mother's shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes and put her head in her hands. "I'm tired, Maura. More tired than a woman my age should be. We're barely making ends meet. I've been working two jobs for the past year so we can hang on to this place. I can't do it any longer."

She looked at Maura then and smiled. "There's this cute little house for rent in the next town over—"

"I don't care about some cute little house for rent," Maura said, interrupting her. "I care about this house. The one that belongs to us. Our home."

Her mother licked her lips and laid her hands flat on the table. They were red and raw from the harsh industrial chemicals. Maura's eyes stung with tears looking at them, thinking of all she had to do each day just to keep them afloat.

"Maura," she said. "Please see the situation from my perspective and try to understand. I'm not even fifty and I feel like I'm a hundred."

"If it's money you need, you can have mine. I've got some in my savings account. And I don't need a car. I can sell it and take the bus to and from school. And there's a city bus that runs to the theater."

"You're not selling your car," her mother said, shaking her head. "You'll be graduating soon. You have your own life. You'd miss being able to get around on your own, and I can't drive you everywhere."

Maura knew she was right, which made it worse. "But . . . we can't sell. I was born here. This is our home. We can't . . ."

"Honey, we don't have a choice," her mother said. "I don't even have a savings account anymore. I missed the mortgage payment last month. We've cut back on almost all the luxuries and can barely afford the lifestyle we have."

Maura laughed. "What lifestyle, Mom? We're eating Ramen!"

"That's precisely my point," she said, though with a tremor in her voice, on the verge of crying. She closed her eyes again and breathed in deeply through her nose before continuing. "I understand you're upset, but I—"

"You know what?" Maura said, suddenly angry. "I've been tearing my hair out for the past year wondering why Dad left us, but now I think I know why."

Her mother closed her mouth and stared. A single tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away. She pushed her bowl aside without touching any of her dinner and rose from the table. "It's been a long day," she said. "I'm going to take a shower and go to bed. Don't stay up too late studying."

Maura could have apologized—she knew she should—but she didn't say anything as her mother left, a hand bracing her lower back as she limped from the room. She was just forty-three, which was far too young to seem so old.

After a few moments of sitting at the table alone, halfheartedly eating her bowl of Ramen, she got up to wash the dishes so her mother wouldn't have to do them in the morning when she rose before the sun to begin yet another long day of work. The dishwasher had broken down weeks ago, but they'd yet to get it repaired. Her mother said it was low on the priority list and that they could make do with washing by hand. Maura didn't mind the minor inconvenience. It was just the two of them and they didn't dirty many dishes anyway, and standing at the sink gave her an excuse to be still and do something mindless.

This past year, their lives had been all about prioritizing. Having a home was important. Having heat and electricity was important. So was having food to eat. Cable didn't matter. Buying a new outfit every week didn't matter, either, nor did buying clothes new. Maura had learned to scour thrift store racks and found the challenge of putting together a decent outfit fun. Sort of.

When she was done with the dishes, she grabbed her bag from where she had dropped it at the front door and trudged up the stairs to her room to begin homework. Even though she'd finished it during her free period at school, there was always studying to be done. But half an hour later, with a blooming headache and eyes that burned and felt gritty from lack of sleep, she pushed her books aside and turned out the light.

*****

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please vote, comment, and recommend Love You To Death to others.