My shift ended at two-thirty, so I had just enough time to hang my apron on the office wall, grab my purse, and head over to pick up Max from school.

When I’d first decided to forsake college and raise my baby, Rosie had let me work two four hour shifts a day, so I could be with Max as much as possible. I would come in early in the morning and cover the breakfast rush while my mom was home with Max. And then my mom’s neighbor, Mrs. Gomez, would watch him in the evening over the dinner rush. It hadn’t always been perfect, and I stressed Rosie out more than I helped her in those early years, but she was a kind enough woman to let me keep my job waitressing despite the baggage that came with me.

Lord knows why I did it. For as gracious as my boss was, my Rosie’s Diner and Donuts To Go paycheck wasn’t anything to get excited about. And farmers happened to be the cheapest people on the planet, so the tips were practically laughable unless the men were ogling. Then they tipped to help with their guilt.

The problem with living in a small town like Clark City was there weren’t a whole lot of job opportunities. Unless I wanted to be a farmhand or become a stripper, my options were limited to waitressing, bartending, or the Piggly Wiggly.

I pulled my little beater of a Toyota Corolla up to the curb outside the school to wait for Max. A few other moms dotted the sidewalk in clusters while they waited for their kids to come out. Heads turned at my arrival, the sputtering engine of my beater drawing their attention. Noses instantly raised in disgust, as if they smelled something bad.

Granted after working eight hours at Rosie’s, I didn’t smell great. But I wasn’t exactly steaming with shit either.

Letting out a long sigh, I reached for the radio and turned it up. Sir Sly did his musical thing and I relaxed into my seat, dropping my head back and closing my eyes.

This was the kind of reaction I was used to—had been used to since grade school. Ruby Dawson, the poor kid. Ruby Dawson, trailer trash.

Ruby Dawson, slut.

The slut moniker wasn’t new. A throwback from when I got pregnant with Max. In high school I was considered a prude, a desperate girl trying to run from the life she was born into. It was amazing what one night could do for a girl’s reputation. “It was only a matter of time…” became synonymous with me.

“You know who her mother is, don’t you?” and “What did you expect from a girl like that?” were also fan favorites.

Not that the town knew my sexual escapades—at least the escapades that had produced Max—were limited to one reckless night.

A knock at my window made me jump, scattering memories that were better left in the past. I opened my eyes to find Jamie Mannor-Shultz standing there, bent over primly at the waist, like she was about to begin a cheer routine.

I reluctantly pushed the power window button and the glass made a loud sound of protest as it slowly moved down. Jamie watched it in alarm.

“I think your window’s broken,” she said in that perky way I remembered from high school. She had been a senior when I was a freshman and captain of the cheerleading squad. She’d married her high school sweetheart, the one-time great Jason Shultz, and was now cheer captain of the room mom squad.

Only the Lord knew why she’d hyphenated her name. Apparently, she’d wanted to hold onto her roots. Her dad was the mayor of Clark City. Also, he owned a car dealership forty-five minutes away in Grand Island, so they had lots of money. The Mannor name had some weight in this town. But so did the Shultz ranch.

Jamie and Jason had been a power couple once upon a time. Now they were power-napping parents. And since Jamie had lost the opportunity to control a squad of perky cheerleaders, she turned her Type A personality on manic moms.

Unfortunately, her daughter Harper and my son Max were in the same class. So, I had to deal with her on a semi-regular basis.

“Not yet,” I returned. “But it’s on its way there.”

Her pert smile turned into a concerned frown. “I know a guy if you want a mechanic recommendation. My dad has taken our cars to Don for years. He’s old, but he knows cars.”

I looked down at my chipped nails and tried to decide if her recommendation was sarcastic or serious. “Thanks, but, I uh, got a guy.” And by that I meant three trailers down, my mom’s friend Duane could help fix the window if I paid him in weed and didn’t mind parts from the junkyard.

He would also be willing to steal a car for me if I slept with him. He had been offering ever since I turned eighteen. My car situation was to the point where I was now considering the option.

Not really.

But kind of now that Jamie was weighing in on my current ride.

She gave me a forced smile. “If you change your mind…”

“Thanks.”

“Anyway, I came over here to talk to you about the Halloween party. I saw you hadn’t signed up for anything yet, and I wanted to let you know there are still a couple of ways to volunteer.”

Coldness swept through my body, like a ghost had just passed through me. Only it wasn’t a real ghost. It was the specter of my childhood and all the parties my mom had forgotten about. Six terrible grade school Halloweens and I was the only child that didn’t have a costume or candy to add to the class party or a mom that volunteered.

I had promised myself that I would never let Max go through that. It didn’t matter that I was still the girl from the trailer park or that I still had no extra money for costumes and candy. What mattered was giving my kid the life I didn’t get.

Not in the weird dance mom way though.

This was totally healthy.

“Oh, I keep forgetting about it,” I told her lamely. “I’ve been meaning to sign up though.”

Her entire face lit up and her thousand-watt smile hit me full force. “Great! That’s wonderful.” She fidgeted a little and I realized she was probably uncomfortable leaning over the way she was.

Before she could continue, I opened my door, renting another loud creaking sound through the air and walked over to the sidewalk. “I guess you don’t need to keep talking to me through the window.”

Somehow her smile stretched, defying the laws of biology. And physics. And whatever else. “You’re so funny, Ruby.”

I managed a shadowed version of her smile. “Ha-ha.”

“If you’d like, I need help running the class party,” she suggested. “You’d have to be here for the last two hours of the day. We’ll set up while the kids go to recess, and then we run the games and snacks and whatnot.” I must have made a face because she quickly added, “I know what you’re thinking, but the kids aren’t that wild. And it’s so fun to watch them parade around in their costumes. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

I made a sound in the back of my throat. It wasn’t the costume parade I was worried about, it was the parade of nosy moms that I preferred to avoid.

The doors to the school opened and a flood of kids poured out. Harper and Max appeared, walking our way, side by side. I knew they were friends at school, but Max was friends with everyone. He had a nice streak that was new to my side of the family. I suspected he got it from his dad. Not that I would ever know for sure.

“I’ll check my work schedule,” I told Jamie noncommittally.

She smiled. Again. “That would be great.” Her maternal gaze drifted back to her daughter. “Look at them. Harper’s always talking about Max. How nice he is.” She faced me, her permanent smile wobbling a bit and I saw it, the dreaded motherhood obligation. “We could do a playdate!” I literally watched the wheels spinning in her head as she mentally plotted the day. “The kids could play, and we could put the treat bags together.”

My mouth tasted like ash and I struggled to swallow. Seven years ago, I would have died if a rich girl from school had asked me to hang out with her. But the world had slapped some sense into me in the worst way and now I didn’t need the popular crowd’s approval to feel comfortable in my own skin. I was happier without it.

But again, this wasn’t about me. This was about Max. And I never set up playdates for the poor kid. His only friends were my mom, Coco, me, and sometimes Ajax. Although even Max knew Ajax was bad news.

The kid was too smart for his own good.

“Max would love that,” I told Jamie honestly. God, how had Max gotten through kindergarten without me ever having this conversation? And now, in the span of a ten-minute conversation, I’d somehow roped myself into volunteering for a class party and committed to a playdate. I resisted the urge to slap my hand over my eyes and groan.

“Really?” Jamie asked, simultaneously sounding hopeful and skeptical. She was like a puppy with the promise of a treat.

It was rude to say no to puppies. At least this puppy. The puppy that was my kid’s room mom and had more power at this school than I wanted to admit.

“Yeah, really,” I told her.

There was that blinding smile again. Maybe she’d dish about her teeth whitening strategy during our playdate.

“Did you hear that, honey?” she asked her daughter. “Max’s mommy said we could have a playdate.”

Both sets of child eyes lit up at the prospect. Max turned to me, that same kind of hope and paranoia mingling in his gaze. What was it about me that made everyone so suspicious?

Oh, wait, I was a jaded shrew.

“Really, Mom?” Max asked.

I nodded and managed a reassuring smile—nothing as confident or as pretty as Jamie’s, but my lips did turn upward. “Sure, buddy. It’ll be fun.”

He threw his arms around my waist and squeezed. His happiness outweighed my dread. “You’re the best, Mommy.”

“I’ll text you,” Jamie promised.

“Do you need my number?”

If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn her cheeks colored with embarrassment. “It’s on the class roster, isn’t it? Is that your cell?”

“Oh, right.” Was she stalking me now? What in the world? “Yeah, that’s my cell.”

“Okay, great. Bye, Ruby.” She looked down at Max and winked. “Bye, Max.”

“Bye,” he said.

After they’d walked away I shared a look with my son. “Harper Shultz? C’mon kid.”

He shrugged. “She’s nice. And she has a lot of Pokémon cards.”

Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I opened the back door for him. “All right, Pikachu, in you go.”

Laughing, he launched himself into the backseat and got busy buckling himself into his booster seat. I walked around the front and climbed in the driver’s seat feeling uneasy. This day had taken a turn for the weird.

This wasn’t the first time Jamie Mannor-Shultz had asked me to volunteer in the classroom, but this was the first time she’d seemed so peppy about the possibility. Maybe she was having trouble getting everything she needed for the party. Or the other moms had her number and were dropping out of school activities right and left.

Or maybe I was the only schmuck still naïve enough to sign up.

Oh, god. What had I gotten myself into? Death by a perky, party-planning control freak.

“What are we doing?” Max asked from the backseat.

I realized I had my hand paused on the keys in the ignition but had yet to turn the car on. I blinked, and the world came back into focus. A group of moms stood on the sidewalk staring at Max and me. When I glared at them, their gazes darted elsewhere, quickly focusing on other things.

This time when I felt the urge to roll my eyes, I gave in. Same shit, different day.

“Let’s go home, huh?” I asked Max.

He didn’t answer. He’d picked up the Batman action figure he’d left in the car this morning and started playing with it.

The drive home took twenty minutes. Usually I could do it in half that time, but I got stuck waiting for a train. Clark City wasn’t large enough to have more than one elementary school and it was located on the more affluent side of town. For as often as I complained about the drive, it wasn’t that bad. We still lived inside city limits even if we were on the other side of the railroad tracks. There were farm kids in Max’s class that would have to ride the bus for the next two hours before they got home.

I made a sound as my poor car bounced over the pothole-covered entrance to the Meadowbrooks Mobile Home Park—otherwise known as Trailer Park Palooza.

All right, I added the palooza part.

The park was as glamorous as you’d expect, but it was the only home I’d ever known. And even though I’d sworn up and down that I’d raise kids in a trailer over my dead body, Max was here, and I was still alive, so there was that.

And on top of everything else, I still lived with my mom. The irony was not lost on me.

I had been a nightmare my senior year of high school, bound and determined to get the hell out of this town and never return. But life has a funny way of laughing at our best laid plans. Instead of college and a career and a life far, far away from Clark City, Nebraska, I found myself pregnant and alone—entirely, completely, totally alone.

My dreams had come crashing down around me, gigantic pieces of debris that exploded on impact. There was one dark night that I’d sat curled up on the bathroom floor, positive pregnancy tests scattered around me, weeping at the realization that life was not turning out how I’d hoped.

Mom walked in and found me. She leaned herself against the bathroom door frame and made a sound in the back of her throat. “Pregnant, huh?”

I looked up at her, this beast of a woman that was hardly maternal and hiccupped a sob. “What am I going to do?”

Expecting her to offer to drive me to the abortion clinic or at the very least point me in the right direction, she shrugged and said, “Pregnancy was the best thing that ever happened to me. Maybe it will be for you too.”

My jaw dropped, just barely managing to miss the bathroom floor. She had to be kidding. “What?”

She shot me a rare smile. “You saved me from a lifetime of stripping, honey. Made me straighten up. Made me a better person. If I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant with you, I’d probably be dead by now.” She glanced up at the ceiling before adding, “Or at least miserable.”

Wasn’t she miserable now? I thought. But no, I guess she wasn’t. For as poor as we’d been my entire life, I couldn’t remember my mom ever complaining about our circumstances or situation. She worked hard. We always had food. And for the most part, we did love each other.

“You think I should keep it?”

“Baby girl, that child inside of you isn’t an it. He or she is a baby. It’s up to you whether you want to go through with the pregnancy and even if you do, you have options. Adoption, for instance. But know that if you keep your baby, you will always have a place in this home. You are always welcome here.”

Her words hit at some deep aching inside me. It was a newborn feeling itself, maybe younger than the child growing in my belly. I had no idea what my reaction was. Some fresh maternal instinct that stretched downy wings and took a bumbling step forward. “You’d let me stay here with a baby?”

She narrowed her eyes and the lines around her mouth tightened. “You think I’d let you go anywhere else with my grandchild? Of course, you’ll stay here. You’re going to need help.” She paused and stared at her shoes. “Unless you know who the father is?”

I knew who the father was. I knew exactly who he was. He’d just deployed to somewhere in the Middle East.

“No,” I told her, my face heating in shame. She assumed it was because of the number of anonymous bed partners I’d had. In reality there had only been the one.

And like I said, he’d just deployed halfway across the world. This wasn’t exactly news I could drop over Skype.

“All right then, stay here. We’ll figure this out, Ruby cube. College can still be an option if you’re willing to work hard.”

I started crying all over again. College—that was the real reason I was mourning. It had never been a question of keeping the baby. While I knew I had options where I didn’t end up being a teen mom, I also knew that the life growing inside of me was mine. And I was responsible for bringing this baby into the world. And now I was the one responsible for protecting him or her, sheltering him or her from this big, bad world, for raising this baby to be the person I could not be.

I wrapped my hand around my now empty belly and that fierce protectiveness that had kept me from making a choice I would have regretted every single day for the rest of my life had sparked to life that day. I knew I’d made the right decision bringing Max into this world.

My mom was right. He’d changed my life in the very best way. Finances were always tight, and it could be difficult living with my mom, but I had never known happiness existed like this. I had never known you could love someone so much and so wholly. I had never known what it was like to be loved like this until I had my very own little person.

The trailers in Meadowbrooks varied in states of dilapidation. The occasional well-kept mobile home stood out like a sore thumb amidst the rest of the hovels. Mom’s was somewhere in between the worst of the worst and the Better Homes and Gardens version that were mostly toward the front of the park.

I pulled beneath the carport and shut off the car. Max already had his seatbelt off and the door opened before I could pull the keys from the ignition.

For all her faults, Max loved his grandma. I heard him yelling for her the second he reached the top of our short wooden deck. He ripped open the flimsy door, a wide smile on his sweet face.

“Grammy!” he shouted enthusiastically. “I saved my strawberry milk for you!”

I chuckled to myself at their weird tradition. Max would order a strawberry milk every single day at school and then kept it in his lunch box with an ice pack until he could deliver it to my mom first thing after school. My mom apparently loved strawberry milk—a fact I didn’t know until Max started school last year. It was by far the oddest thing about her.

Maybe.

Okay, it was one of her many oddities.

She was already sucking strawberry milk through the straw when I finally walked in the house. “Hi, Mom,” I greeted, feeling the usual release of stress as soon as I was safely inside my home.

She barely took a break from drinking her milk. “Heard that Cole kid’s coming back,” she said gruffly. “Don’t suppose he’ll want to settle up at Misty’s now that he’s made something of himself in this world.”

My stomach turned at another mention of Levi. “How much does he owe?” I asked out of genuine curiosity. Levi didn’t seem like the strip club kind of guy. At least he didn’t back when I’d known him. He had always had a girlfriend and he was never the overly wild kind. Sure, he did some stupid stuff when we were kids, but a strip club seemed like a stretch.

She made a sound in the back of her throat. “More than any eighteen-year-old kid should owe an establishment of Misty’s repute.”

“He’s not eighteen anymore. I’m sure he’s learned to pay his debts by now.”

“I’m sure he has not,” she countered. “In my experience, men don’t learn lessons. They just learn how to cover their tracks better.”

My mother, the expert on everything male. Her accurate assessment would have been laughable if she hadn’t worked at Misty’s for thirty years. Turns out, you do learn a thing or two about men in that environment.

She was right about Max’s father anyway. In the midst of morning sickness and feeling sorry for myself, I’d wondered aloud if I would have to share custody of my child. She’d said, “Ruby baby, he’s surely gotten a taste of the world. He ain’t coming back.”

And he hadn’t. Although, to be fair, not for the reasons she’d assumed.

She still didn’t know who Max’s father was. And she assumed I didn’t either.

“You know what? Maybe I’m thinking of that friend of his. The bird one.”

I set my purse down and tried to imagine who on earth she was talking about. The bird one? “Finch?” I guessed.

“Yeah, Finch.”

“He still lives in town, Mama.”

“I guess he does,” she grumbled.

“So, Levi Cole never ran up a tab with Misty’s?”

“Now I can’t remember. God, time moves like a son of a bitch.”

“Mom,” I scolded for the language.

At least my better assumptions about Levi were right. He wasn’t the strip-club-voyeur she’d accused him of being. This was how rumors got started.

Her eyes cut to Max who stared at her with an open mouth. “Sorry, baby.”

He turned his wide eyes on me and I knew I had to cover for her bad mouth yet again. “She didn’t mean it. Go get the cuss jar. She can pay for this one.”

He ran off to his room to retrieve the mason jar I’d labeled the cuss jar years ago. It was the jar that was going to send him to college one day for all the money my mom dumped inside. Full ride probably. Anywhere he’d like to go.

Ivy League? Sure. Why not? Grandma can’t hold back her bevvy of F words so the world is your oyster, Max.

“Anyway,” she continued, casually pulling her wallet out of her tattered purse. She always had a stack of one-dollar bills on her. Since I was a child, I could remember her pulling out her glitter smattered roll of small bills. They fascinated me as a kid. I could never figure out how so many individual bills amounted to so little. Now, as an adult, they gross me out. But like I said, I was shooting for Max to go to Harvard, so we’d take all the stripper money we could get our greedy hands on. “This Cole kid coming back has kicked up quite a stir. You’d think Jesus was riding in on a donkey for all the excitement buzzing around town.”

“Yeah, I heard all about it at Rosie’s. Something about his parents finally convincing him to take over the family farm. RJ doesn’t think he’s up to task. Says, he’ll tank the company in one year and then Darcy and Rich will have to retire next door to us.”

My mom grunted a laugh. “RJ has always hated the Cole family. He’s intimidated by them.”

It was hard for me to imagine RJ intimidated by anyone, even a family with a farm the size of the Cole’s.

RJ was confident in his farm operation. He’d told me several times how he was happy to keep it small enough, so he could still work it, but big enough to give his family a future.

I’d always loved his answer. It was one I could relate to. Clearly, I wasn’t after fame and fortune. But it would be nice to not have to worry about every single little thing. Dreading the days when Max outgrew every piece of clothing and pair of shoes and needed bigger sizes. Or fearing the orthodontist if the discussion of braces started getting thrown around. I was already stressed out about the Halloween party because I didn’t know how much volunteering would cost me.

It was only the middle of September, but I knew I had to start putting away a little bit every paycheck, so I would have something extra if Jamie suddenly asked me to purchase all the treat bag paraphernalia or juice boxes for the entire school.

“You look tired, baby,” Mom commented. “Hard day at work?”

“Just a hard day.” I sighed and slid onto the stool beside her.

“Don’t you hate how many of those there are?” she asked, her eyes glittering with mischief. “This grown-up thing is for the birds.”

“Amen.”

Max returned with the cuss jar. “Two dollars, Grammy.”

“Two dollars?” she gasped.

He grinned at her. “The F word is five! You’re getting a bargain.”

We laughed at my crazy, smart, ridiculous kid. He’d been the one to decide the varying degrees of fines. On one hand, I knew I should be a better mom and protect him from all these words to begin with. On the other, I knew it was more important to raise him the right way than to always put him in the right situations. I couldn’t possibly control every single thing he’s exposed to during our lifetimes. But I could help him become the best man possible. I could teach him through the hard and awkward and awful situations and help him become kind and honest, loyal and giving.

Or, at least that’s what I hoped to do.

“I guess I am.” My mom laughed.

“What about homework, little man?” I asked him after he’d collected my mom’s money.

He made a frustrated sound. “Maybe, I don’t know.”

Pulling out his folder, I dove into the after-school mom responsibilities I knew so well. It was weird that Jamie had invited us over for a playdate. But it was even weirder that Levi Cole was coming back.

What did he want here?

How long was he going to stay?

Not that it mattered to me. I planned to ignore him, remember?

Easy.