Princess & the Player

thirty-five: skipping forward

Maggie's POV:

Sometimes I wondered what it would have been like to grow up knowing Mary Margaret and my dad's family. 

At first, I just couldn't get used to her. Or her driving. But slowly, we got to know each other as we shared the hotel room over a week. 

We had breakfast and usually dinner at the concierge lounge. Mary bought me a one-piece swimsuit that was practically its own bathrobe but it covered all the stitches. She swam laps every day in the hotel pool and I sat on a lounge  chair or dangled my feet in the water. Before dinner, we would carefully walk to get my strength back.

Otherwise during those days, Grandma and I went shopping and  museums and toured 'historic' buildings. She drove me out to the country a few times and had me practice driving with her rental car - which I guessed was a dozen kinds of illegal. She drove Laurie and I back up to the camp for the second visit with Jeb.

"So, she's a thing, now?" Jeb had glanced dubiously at Mary Margaret, who was watching us from under a tree. 

"Yeah, I guess so."

We'd walked between the paddocks with Laurie racing ahead. I showed him the pictures of the apartment and the pool. 

"This is for real?"

"If you're OK with it. You could stay where you are, Jeb."

He snorted. "But what about school?"

I had gotten the idea from a post on Facebook by a guy named Mike Rowe. Jeb had loved his show about disgusting jobs. "I found a county junior high that feeds into Coal Tech."

"What's that?"

"A high school and community college program. You can end up with an associates degree or certificate in stuff like computers or machining or construction or plumbing. Like that."

I could see he wanted to mock the idea but he was interested. "I like building with Dad."

"I know. So...go ahead with the paperwork?"

He nodded. "So is it for real? Can I come home to this new apartment when this place is done?"

"I just need a job."

"What about lifeguarding? You got that now, right? And they got like a dozen of them here."

"That's not a bad idea, actually," I smiled.

Jeb bumped me with his shoulder and almost smiled back.

When we got back, I called the social worker about getting the kids in school. Turned out, I couldn't because I wasn't their guardian - yet. But she could and she told me that foster kids often got some special admissions. I gave her the names of the school for Jeb and the elementary school near the new apartment for Laurie. 

That night, Grandma and I walked over a mile. It took 36 minutes. So, officially, I was a frigging sloth.

Marco's POV:

My return to Maggie had been delayed by the New Jersey project. No one expected that we'd break ground so quickly but everything was coming together. The horizontals - things like sewage and gas - were already underway. Once that was done, they'd start the verticals - building the first 5 model homes. Stephen figured that all three phases would sell out in a blink.

The summer had been good for me, professionally. Despite the drama. Everything I did at THI was building experience credit that would help shorten the distance between graduation and licensure. Plus, I was great with prospective clients. Having built and lived in a sustainable tiny home, I spent a lot of time answering questions about what life was like.