25. Karissa
Chapter twenty-five
Karissa
I see the number. I almost let it go to voicemail.
Almost.
"Mom."
"Baby." Her voice is the same. Warm, slightly breathless, like she's been rushing toward me from somewhere far away. "I'm in the city. I know it's early. I just — I needed to hear your voice."
I set the dough down. Wipe my hands on my apron.
"Where are you staying?"
A pause. The kind that answers the question before she does. "I was hoping we could talk about that."
***
She looks smaller than I remember.
That's the first thing I notice when she walks into the bakery at 9:00 a.m., right after the morning rush clears.
Linda Linford is fifty-three years old, and she has my cheekbones and my stubbornness and absolutely none of my discipline, and every time I see her, I spend the first thirty seconds recalibrating to the reality of her instead of the version I carry in my head.
The version in my head is the one who filed sixty thousand dollars of debt under my name and smiled when I confronted her about it.
This version orders a chamomile tea and wraps both hands around the mug and looks tired.
"I saw the news," she says. "You and him. It was everywhere, baby. My daughter." Her smile is real, or real enough. "I'm so happy for you."
"Thank you." I wait for the turn. There's always a turn.
"You cut your hair," she says.
"Six months ago." I sit down across from her. "What's going on?"
She takes her time with it. She always takes her time, layering in the context, the circumstances, the reasons-that-aren't-excuses before she arrives at the actual ask. I used to let her do it. I used to sit through the whole architecture of it because dismantling it felt cruel.
I'm thirty minutes into prep time I don't have.
"Mom. What do you need?"
She looks up. Something moves across her face, not quite hurt, more like resignation. Like she expected this version of me and is still disappointed by it anyway.
"I got behind," she says. "On rent. It's not — it's not like before, Karissa. I've been doing the program. Eighteen months clean. I just hit a rough patch with the job and the timing was bad and I didn't have anywhere else —"
"How much?"
"Three thousand dollars."
I do the math before she finishes the sentence. I always do the math. It's the thing I'm best at and the thing I hate most about myself sometimes. The way every number immediately connects to every other number, the way I can feel the budget shifting in real time.
Three thousand is the cooler compressor payment I just deferred. Three thousand is two weeks of Marcus's salary. Three thousand is the gap between making payroll next month and not making it.
"I can't," I say.
"I know you have —"
"I don't." I keep my voice flat. Not cold, just level. "I know what it looks like from the outside, Mom. I know what the engagement looks like. But the bakery's finances are mine, and right now they don't have three thousand in them that isn't already spoken for."
She's quiet for a moment. Her eyes drop to the mug.
"I've been clean eighteen months," she says again. Quieter this time.
"I know." And I do believe her. She looks it, in the particular way of someone doing the real work. Steadier than she's been in years. "I'm glad. That doesn't change what I have."
She turns the mug slowly. "It's not just the rent," she says. "There's someone I owe who isn't a bank. The kind who doesn't send letters. Staying current on the apartment is the only thing keeping me somewhere he can't reach."
I know the shape of it before she finishes. I know exactly what that kind of debt looks like from the inside.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I still can't."
The back door opens. Diego's driver rolls in the weekly dry goods delivery, dolly stacked high, Rivera Supply printed across every box in blue block letters. My mother's eyes track it the way they track everything, quietly, cataloguing.
I don't notice it at the time.
"I just thought — with Noah —"
"No." The word comes out faster than I intend. "What's mine is mine. What's his is his. That's not how it works."
She nods, slow. Turns the mug in her hands. "You love him."
I don't answer that.
"It's okay if you do," she says. "I'm not saying it like a criticism."
"I know how you're saying it." I stand up, start clearing the table between us even though there's nothing to clear. "I'm sorry I can't help with the money. I mean that. If something changes I'll call you."
She leaves twenty minutes later. I watch her through the front window until she turns the corner, then I go back to the kitchen and finish the croissants and don't think about the look on her face when I said no.
I'm very good at not thinking about things.
Noah calls at noon.
I let it ring twice, which is one ring longer than usual, which means he'll notice.
"Hey."
"You're off." His voice is quiet. Precise. "What happened?"
"Nothing. Long morning."
"Karissa."
I close my eyes. The way he says my name when he knows I'm lying is its own particular problem. It's not an accusation. It's just accurate, like a door he opens by standing in front of it.
"My mom came in," I say. "She's in the city. She needed money. I said no."
Silence. Then: "How much did she ask for?"
"Three thousand."
More silence. I can feel him thinking. I know exactly what the thinking sounds like by now: that particular stillness before he starts running options.
"Noah. Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"You don't know what I was about to say."
"You were going to offer to cover it." I lean against the counter. "And I'm telling you right now, before you finish the thought. No. This is not a problem you get to solve. This is my mother, and my history with her, and my decision."
The silence this time is different. Tighter.
"She filed debt under your name," he says. "She cost you years."
"Yes."
"And she came back to ask for money."
"Yes."
"And you're telling me to stay out of it."
"I'm telling you to stay out of it."
A beat. Two. I count them.
"Fine," he says. But it doesn't sound fine. It sounds like a door that's been closed and is straining against the latch.
"I mean it, Noah."
"I heard you."
"Hearing me and respecting what I said are two different things, and we both know that."
The silence stretches out long enough that I wonder if I've gone too far. Then: "That's fair."
It's two words. It shouldn't land the way it does, like he's sitting with it instead of just waiting for me to stop talking. But it does.
"I handled it," I say, softer. "She asked, I said no, she left. It's done."
"Is it?"
I don't answer that. Because the honest answer is: I don't know. She'll come back. She always comes back, not because she's malicious but because I'm still on the list of people she believes will eventually say yes.
Every time I say no it costs me something, and I can't explain that to him in a way that doesn't also explain everything else: the debt, the credit collapse, the eighteen months of loan applications, all of it woven together into the thing I've been managing alone since I was twenty-one.
"I need to get back to prep," I say.
"Come over tonight."
"Noah —"
"Not to fix anything." His voice drops a register. "Just come over."
I look at the rack of croissants cooling on the counter. At the prep list on the whiteboard. At the number I wrote this morning and circled twice: the gap in next month's budget that I don't have a plan for yet.
"I'll text you when I close," I say.
"Okay."
I hang up and stand in the kitchen for a minute, just breathing.
My phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number, no name, no intro, just: She called me this morning. Said she was your mother. Asked me to extend your account and release the difference to her directly.
I read it twice.
I type back: Who is this?
Three dots. Then: Diego. Wanted you to know about it before I call you later.
Diego Rivera. My supplier. The man I've spent two years building credit with, payment by payment, after the debt my mother left me took a sledgehammer to everything I had.
The floor tilts under me for a second.
I set the phone down on the stainless counter and stare at the croissants.
My mother has been clean for eighteen months. She's been doing the work. I watched her walk in here worn down, smaller than I remembered, and I believed her.
I said no. So she went around me. To the one relationship I cannot afford to lose.
I pick the phone back up. I look at Noah's contact. My thumb hovers.
I put it back down.
This one is mine to handle first.