Chapter 4
Most evenings, Noelle was so tired after she got home from work, she could hardly wrestle up the energy to nuke a microwave dinner. Tonight, however, she felt different for reasons she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Rather than spending a lonely Saturday night in the small apartment she lived in above her parents’ garage, she decided to actually enter the house and borrow her mother’s oven. It wasn’t as if Doris was likely to be using it. Noelle couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother cook anything, but she had a feeling it had probably been last July, for her stepdad’s birthday. Cliff loved a good pork tenderloin, and even though Doris made a fuss anytime anyone asked her to cook anything, she had made it for him. Despite her protesting, her mother was a good c
