I couldn’t face the party.
I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to handle it, even at the best of times.
But I was feeling completely spent. Part of it was relief that the school had finally opened, and gone well.
Part of it was the pregnancy exhaustion.
Some of it was my increasingly confusing feelings about Hunter, and about Adrian.
Then there was Maya and her new position.
And of course, there was the disaster of what my father and brother had done.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to make small talk at a party while wondering what to do about money.
As I drove into their neighborhood, I felt a sudden twinge of envy for people who enjoyed going home for a visit. I was driving into the neighborhood I’d grown up in, toward my childhood home, but no part of me felt nostalg
