Alice's Umbrella

Chapter 2: Some Walks You Have to Take Alone

My heart sank. Shit! In all the hustle and bustle of the last few days, I'd completely forgotten to send in my rent check.

"Oh shoot," I said into the receiver, running to the counter where I could usually find my checkbook buried under one stack of bills or the other. "Remind me, how much do I owe you?"

"With the late fee, $2,395." I almost dropped the phone.

"How much?" He repeated the number, and I swore I could almost hear him smirking.

"For this piece-of-shit apartment?" I hissed.

"For the piece-of-shit apartment I am ever so kindly allowing you and your little brat to live in." I glanced toward the living room and saw that Alice was thankfully still glued to the television, oblivious to our conversation.

"Tom, I don't have that kind of money right now," I said on the verge of pleading. "I-I got laid off last week, and I've got bills to pay, and then there's food to put on the table, and-"

"Not my problem. I can give you until the end of the week, but if I don't get that check by then...I'm afraid I'll have no choice than to evict you. Good day." The line went dead.

"Yeah, I bet you'd evict us," I said under my breath. "Asshole." I ran my hands through my tangled hair, wishing for a magical solution to my problems. Perhaps the doorbell would ring, and I'd answer it only to be told that a distant millionaire uncle had died and left all his money to me. It didn't, though, and instead I found myself slumped over my laptop at the kitchen table, chewing on the end of a pen while I studied my bank statement.

$2,702.64 was the number my eyes focused on. The current balance of my account. I wish I could call my dad and- no, I can't. This is something I wanted to handle by myself. Some walks you have to take alone.

Paying Braxton's rent fee would leave me with only about $300 to pay for what we needed to. That included food, gas money, the new shoes Alice had been needing for some time now, and whatever else happened to require money. Which, in this day and age, was just about anything. I groaned and sunk down farther in the chair, staring up at the ceiling. Not having a job at the moment certainly didn't help matters. The steady position I'd held as a receptionist at a dentist's office downtown for the last year had been vile, but paid fairly well. In the words of the unsympathetic human resources person who'd broken the news to me, "they were experiencing some financial difficulties and found it unfortunately necessary to cut back on the number of people currently employed at the office."

"Are you okay, Mommy?" Alice waddled into the kitchen and came to sit on my lap.

"Yeah, button, just tired," I said, stoking her soft hair. I shuddered when I thought about what might happen to us if we were evicted. Where would we go? Apartments were hard enough to find as it was, let alone one that I would actually be able to afford. Would we end up in some kind of home? Would they take Alice away from me? I tightened my grip on her small frame. I would never let that happen. I couldn't.

A determined flame burning my core, I straightened up promptly and set Alice on her feet. She looked at me inquisitively. "Why don't you go get dressed and we'll go out for a walk."