“Derek needs to settle in before the baby comes.”
I looked at Lauren.
“Are you okay with this?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Then she shrugged.
“You always said you hated living here.”
“I said I hated having no privacy.”
“Same thing.”
“No, Lauren. It really isn’t.”
Mom stepped between us.
“Enough. I am not letting you turn her pregnancy into a competition.”
That sentence told me everything.
Even my homelessness was somehow going to become an attack on Lauren.
I stared at my mother.
“Are you telling me to leave?”
Her face tightened.
“I’m saying it’s time for you to start your adult life.”
“When?”
She looked away.
“By the weekend.”
It was Tuesday.
Four days.
I had four days to build an adult life.
On Saturday morning, everything I owned fit into two duffel bags, one cardboard box, and the trunk of a twelve-year-old Honda Accord.
