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I drifted off to sleep, feeling angry at myself, which was probably a bad idea I slept fitfully, weird iled up in an ocean full of pearls I kept waving to the lifeguard standing on shore, as Harris onean dove into the pearls and swa, lost in a sea of pearls

MONDAY ROLLED AROUND AND I got so busy that I didn’t get around to calling Mr Berenger At least that’s what I told h, and I still didn’t call hi about Reece’s offer to stay in the apart at the edges ofto rationalize how I couldlike that withoutout on ht to check on whether I had called about the bank job, my excuse sounded laroup ran late By the tili on my door I was a horrible liar If Mo under my eyebrows and the color faded fro out of ia I asked you to call hi to wonder if you even want this job"

"I do," I insisted, gri reflection My bothersome eyebrows, several shades darker than h as I made my excuses

"Well, I certainly hope so Because your father and I certainly aren’t going to let you sit around all su pedicures Even Ahborhood pool Responsibility, Georgia We expect nothing less from you"

When have I ever done anything less than be responsible?

I bit back the caustic replyand others that scalded the back of hter I’ve done everythingthey expected In high school, when Mouitar and drop out of choir for the debate team, I did When they said I should be a business iven her a reason to think I needed a lecture on responsibility?

"I’ll call hihed "Don’t disappoint ia" Laced beneath the words I hear the words she never says, but are there just the same

Don’t fail me like your father did

My real father Not the man she married when I was three No The father who left me when I o months old because he couldn’t handle the responsibilities of a wife, child, e, and job

My birth father had been a et them and lived in his van When I showed an aptitude for h school She insisted that with o and h, deep down, that Mom hated that part of me because it reo, al only to please my mother and stepfather

Don’t be hi the words, that’s what she always o, I had vowed to be the opposite of that hter Mom needed me to be Someone she could be proud of Responsible and solid The kind of girl ent to college and married a lawyer or doctor and took summer internships at a bank

Harris’s voice echoed in