Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang

Author:Kat Tang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2024-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Mari looked drained when she returned home that evening, like gravity had doubled down on her shoulders, and when Lily mentioned seeing her aunt next week, Mari’s frown lines deepened as she took a mechanical biteful of chicken that might as well have been gravel. After Lily went to bed, Mari opened a can of beer and sat back down at the table.

“The aunt thing,” I said. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.” In the resulting silence, a normal person might have jumped in with more to say, but I was comfortable in pauses, and could wait for as long as Mari needed to respond. The refrigerator whined and settled. A creak and muffled laugh from the apartment across the wall. Mari slid the can around in the condensation on the table.

“I think I’m gonna lose my job,” she said. “The boss isn’t happy about my ‘lack of team spirit.’ ”

I knew Mari wanted me to say something—to assure her that her boss wouldn’t fire her over something so petty when she’d been a loyal worker for so long, to question the legality of such a move, or even just to call him an asshole—but I was at a loss for words. I was the one who’d told her to skip the happy hours, promising her that everything would be okay. That we’d make it work. But I hadn’t expected this. Mari, jobless? What was the value of my words if she didn’t have a job? Couldn’t pay for my time?

“How long do you think we can keep this up for?” she said, as though reading my doubts.

The timing could not have been worse; I’d only just understood that helping Mari and Lily would help me set things right. But I couldn’t tell Mari that, not without scaring her into thinking I wanted more from them than they could give. They didn’t need to give me anything—I was the one who needed to give, and give, and give. “As long as you want,” I said.

“Did you ever think it was weird? Our arrangement?”

“No.” Though the only other times I’d played a father figure, either the child was too young to care or I was only hired for a day. It felt worse in some ways to play father for only a day, especially to a child who knew I wasn’t their real dad—and who might begin to hope that I could be, only to never see me again. One little boy in particular, whose mother hired me to be a husband/father during her college reunion, wouldn’t stop crying when we parted ways at the end of the night—screaming “Daddy! Daddy!” as his mother dragged him home. This was four years ago, and I had avoided these types of parent roles ever since (unless, of course, they paid handsomely). That child must be a teenager by now; I hoped he’d long forgotten about me.

“Have you ever thought about how this would end?” said Mari.

In the beginning I’d assumed Mari would

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