Becky
The call came while I was folding Micah's laundry, small shirts and socks stacked in careful piles on his bed, the kind of ordinary task that felt almost obscene given everything else happening around us. My phone buzzed with a name I hadn't seen in three years.
Denise. My old shift manager from the diner.
I almost didn't answer. Some instinct told me nothing good could come from a call out of nowhere, not after the week I'd had. But old habits die slow, and some part of me still felt obligated to people who'd once been kind to me when kindness was scarce, so I picked up.
"Becky? Oh my God, it's really you. I've been seeing everything online, I had to call, are you okay?"
"I'm managing," I said carefully, folding a tiny sock into a ball, my hands finding something to do while my
