On the Fly Read Free Page A

when you were in Texas?” she asked.
    “ I did. I don’t
anymore.”
    He would damn sure never step foot
near my kids again. Thinking about Jason now would only make my
blood boil, though. Either that or make me cry. One of the two,
neither of which would help me get this job.
    “ Hmm,” Mr. Sutter
said.
    That was usually what interviewers
said right before they thanked me for my time and ushered me out
the door. I had no intention of letting that happen again today. I
couldn’t stop myself. I was getting to be a bit desperate, or maybe
a lot desperate, and desperation made me do stupid
things.
    “ Look,” I said before I
thought better of it, definitely more emphatically than I’d said
anything since stepping foot in this building. “I’m a hard worker,
as hard a worker as you will ever come across. I may not know how
to do everything you need me to do yet, but I’ve never faced a
challenge I couldn’t meet, and I learn fast. I was an honor student
in high school until I got pregnant. I worked in manufacturing
because that was the only job I could get without a high school
diploma other than working a drive-through window, and
manufacturing paid better and gave me benefits that a job in fast
food couldn’t.” I finally took a breath and looked to see what sort
of reaction my speech had garnered.
    Instead of glaring at me
like he wanted to kick me out of his office for practically begging
for a job, Jim Sutter looked…I don’t know, interested . That shocked me. It
shocked me a lot, actually.
    “ Do you know how to type?”
he asked, leaning back in his chair with his hands forming a
steeple in front of him. “How to use word processors and
spreadsheets, that sort of thing?”
    I nodded. “I learned in middle
school.”
    Mrs. Alvarez stared at me
and then scanned the r é sum é I’d
given them. She brought her eyes back up to meet mine. “You don’t
have a phone number on here and the address is a hotel. What are
you running away from?”
    “ I…” Okay, so maybe I only
thought I was shocked before. I wasn’t prepared to answer questions
like this. It seemed too personal. But I needed a job, and this was
starting to feel like it might be my only real chance to get one.
“Someone hurt my kid. He can’t hurt her anymore. He’s in prison. I
wanted to give her a fresh start, a chance to reset and make her
life what she wants it to be.” I wanted that for all of us, not
just Maddie…but especially for her.
    “ That’s why you left
Texas,” Mrs. Alvarez said while Mr. Sutter just sat back and let
her take over the interview. “But why did you come to Portland? Of
all the places you could have gone, why here? You said you don’t
have anyone to help with the kids, so what brought you?”
    My reason sounded stupid, even to me.
I let out a half-laugh, but I told them anyway. “When I was a kid,
my parents brought us here on a family vacation once. We saw all
the sights, did the whole tourist thing. But on our last day, they
brought us to Powell’s City of Books, and I thought it was the best
thing ever, books upon books upon books. I could get lost in there
and never want to be found. I thought maybe something like that
would be good for my daughter, a place where she could live in
someone else’s world for a while.” A fictional world was a heck of
a lot better than her reality, lately.
    With that pathetic explanation, I was
pretty sure they’d be ending the interview any minute. Who picks up
and moves their family halfway across the country because of a
freaking bookstore? No one sane.
    I probably wasn’t sane anymore. Good
grief, how did this interview get so twisted around? Why had I let
it? I probably should just end it myself, thank them and then get
up and walk out, see what other employers the agency could send me
to.
    “ Have you taken her to
Powell’s yet?” Mr. Sutter asked before I could do that.
    I nodded. “Over the
weekend.”
    “ And did it
help?”
    Maddie, Tuck, and I