The Fortunate Ones

Over.

My.

Dead.

Body.

…

Welp, I’m a dead body. I’m sitting in the employee locker room at the country club, and my shift starts in 15 minutes—correction, Ellie’s shift starts in 15 minutes. I hate that I’m here, sitting in her white polo dress. The material is some kind of thick cotton blend that is sure to suffocate me the moment I step out into the Texas heat.

I could be preparing for my shift—after all, I’ve never worked out there before—but Ellie filled me in on most of the details when she dropped the dress off last night. I was staying strong in my refusal until the tutoring agency contacted me about an interview next week. Sadly, I need Ellie to cover my shift so I can go.

I think her exact words were, Oh, how the tables have turned.

So now I’m here and Ellie is wearing a flower crown and smoking a bowl while her boyfriend bangs on a tattered tambourine.

Conversation on the other end of the locker room trickles over to me.

“—saw him just now.”

“I think he’s eating lunch.”

Two new waitresses are gossiping about one of the guests, and I’d bet a million dollars I know who it is. I still haven’t heard from him. My email gets checked every hour on the hour, but I tell myself that’s in case the agency has another interview invitation for me.

“I think the hostess put him in Sammy’s section. Lucky bitch.”

My stomach knots into a tight ball.

I look down at my watch.

14 minutes left.

I don’t want to listen to their conversation, but I don’t want to start my shift any earlier than necessary, so I reach for my phone and dial the first number I ever memorized.

I don’t expect her to answer, but then the FaceTime call starts to connect and my heart drops.

“Brooke?!”

The excitement in her voice makes my heart sore.

“Hey Mom.”

“Hold on. I didn’t realize this was FaceTime. Let me just step inside. The connection is a little better in there.”

There’s a mixture of indiscernible sounds and I’m pretty sure she drops the phone at one point, but about a minute later, her face appears on my phone screen and a wave of homesickness hits me.

“There you are! My little Bwookie. Where are you?” She squints her eyes. “Is that a locker behind your head?”

I swallow down the sudden—and strange—urge to cry as best as possible and plaster on a big smile. “Yeah, I’m at work. I only have a few minutes to talk.”

She holds the phone out a little so more than just her eyes and nose fit into the frame, and I get a better look at her. She looks to be ready for bed with her long light brown hair wrapped up in a bun and a loose-fitting kimono wrapped around her shoulders. She’s in her late 40s, but she doesn’t look it. Good genes, I guess. Light blue glasses sit on the brim of her nose, the only sign that she’s aging at all. She pushes them up onto her head and smiles.

“I guess that’s why you’re wearing that polo shirt?”

I cringe. “Yeah, it’s a dress actually.”

“Why does it have Ellie’s name embroidered on it?”

“Oh.” I glance down and brush my finger across her name. “I’m covering a shift for her.”

“That’s nice of you. I didn’t know you two were working together.”

Yes she did; I told her about it the last time we FaceTimed.

“We’re both at the country club, remember?”

“Oh yes! Of course.”

From the tone of her voice, I can tell she’s lying. She doesn’t remember.

“How are you, Mom? I’ve been trying to reach you for the last few weeks.”

She frowns. “I’m sorry, honey. Jorge and I were stationed in a remote village in Argentina for the last month and a half and there weren’t any cell towers within a few miles of the village. I thought I told you I’d be out of contact for a bit?”

She didn’t, but I nod. “Yeah, I must have forgotten.”

I walk a tight rope when it comes to my mom because I’m too scared to rock the boat. We talk so rarely and though I’d love nothing more than to berate her for falling off the face of the earth without any warning, I don’t want to spend these precious few minutes arguing. Instead, I fill her in on what I’ve been up to lately. I tell her about the book I just finished and brag about the interview I have next week with the tutoring agency.

She grins. “That sounds awesome, Brooke. I know you’d rather be working with a family than dealing with that job at the country club, but hang in there. It’ll work out when it’s supposed to.”

I try to take her words to heart.

“Thanks Mom.”

“If I text you my address, would you mind sending me that book? The Nightingale? It’s hard to get paperbacks down here.”