The Perfect Fraud by Ellen LaCorte

Author:Ellen LaCorte
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-05-06T16:00:00+00:00

26

Rena

“Thanks a lot for watching her today, Mrs. Lupito. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

After living in Phoenix for almost two months, I really had to get out and do something. Come on, how much can you be with a four-year-old in a one-bedroom shithole without losing your mind? I know where the grocery store is now, but it has almost nothing as far as organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, or whole-grain stuff. I complained to the manager, and he gave me this look like I asked him for kangaroo tits or monkey balls. He said there was another store in Tempe that maybe had what I was looking for. I’m absolutely convinced the only food people eat out here is tortillas. They fill them with chicken or beans or cheese or pork, but it’s still all tortillas, all the damn time. I checked the maps feature on my phone and found out the store the guy recommended was at least ten miles away, so I would have to take a cab. Maybe Mrs. Lupito would let me use her car, but I seriously doubt that. Last week she gave me a dirty look when I asked her for a plunger. Stephanie had clogged the toilet up even after I told her a thousand times to use no more than five sheets of toilet paper.

Besides, I need the money. Gary’s punier-than-shit alimony and child-support checks get deposited in a bank that, luckily, has a branch not too far away from me. I never use checks or credit cards. As soon as his checks clear, I take cash out and pay everything that way—rent, groceries, whatever. But what he sends me barely covers what we need.

During our first weeks here, besides going to the Mommy Loves Baby classes, Stephanie and me went to a couple of local playgrounds. I was thinking maybe I could meet some other moms there. Except for a few smelly homeless people, the playgrounds were totally empty. And I think I know why. Stephanie actually got a burn on her ass, a real burn, from going down one of the slides. Forget about even touching the chains on the swings. I guess those are things kids around here only do, like, maybe November through March.

Mostly, we stay inside, but no matter how many times I spray Lysol or wipe the walls with Clorox and water, it still smells like mold and dirty feet.

So I finally made the decision to get a job, something easy and part-time. Mrs. Lupito said she’d watch Stephanie while I looked.

Luckily, the second place I went to hired me. Bert’s Pharmacy is a drugstore, and it’s only two blocks from my place. There was a HELP WANTED sign in the window, but you could hardly see it since it was behind a bunch of stuff on a shelf there. Next to a pile of Beanie Babies (who even collects those anymore?), there was this dusty do-it-yourself blood pressure machine, a set of crutches,

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