You don’t always realize when you’re walking out of Egypt.
Sometimes it looks like a resignation letter. Sometimes it sounds like I can’t do this anymore, spoken quietly in a bathroom stall so nobody hears you crying. Sometimes you leave because you are brave. Sometimes you leave because staying has become its own kind of fear.
Simone Avery had imagined that if she ever walked away from the firm, she would feel the way women looked in photographs when they announced they had chosen themselves: shoulders back, face turned toward the sun, some expensive coffee in hand. Instead, she sat in her car in the parking garage for twenty-three minutes with the engine off. Her badge was in the cup holder. Human Resources had already disabled it, but she had forgotten to hand it over. On Monday, someone from security would probably email.
The thought embarrassed her. Even now, after twelve years, after everything, she was worried about returning company property correctly. Her phone buzzed.
Francine: You out?
Simone stared at the message.
Simone: In the garage.
Three dots appeared.
Francine: That is not out.
Despite herself, Simone laughed. She started the car. At home, the house looked exactly as it had that morning. Two sneakers belonging to her son were under the dining-room table, neither near its mate. A glass Marcus had used before work sat in the sink. There was a package on the front step she had forgotten ordering three weeks earlier, when forty-two dollars did not feel like a moral decision. She carried the box inside and left it unopened. For the first few days, freedom was almost convincing.
She slept until eight. She made coffee in a real mug instead of pouring it into the travel cup that had rolled around the passenger-side floor of her car for months. She took Isaiah to school herself and watched him walk all the way through the doors.
“You can go, Mom,” he called over his shoulder.
“I know.”
“You’re still standing there.”
“I know that too.”
He was eleven and newly embarrassed by devotion. She went home smiling. She called the first week a reset. By the second week, she called it a sabbatical. By the third, she had started checking the balance in their checking account before getting out of bed.
Marcus’s salary covered most of the house, but most was a dangerous word. Most did not include the car payment, the private school balance they were already behind on, the credit card that had become groceries sometime around March, or the automatic charges that seemed insignificant when two salaries were landing every other Friday. They had already talked about moving Isaiah to public school. His aid covered more than half the tuition, and with the year underway Marcus wanted to keep one part of his life from changing if they could. Simone had agreed. Some days she agreed less. Simone had savings. Then she had less savings. Then she had a number she did not want to call savings because calling it that made the number seem insulting.
Still, she believed something was coming. She had not left recklessly. She had prayed. She had made lists. She had talked to people who loved her and people who knew the industry and one woman from church who had told her, “Sometimes God has to empty your hands before He can put something new in them.” Simone had written that down. At the time it sounded beautiful.
Six weeks later, with an overdue notice open on the kitchen counter, she wanted to call the woman and ask whether God could have left enough in one hand for the electric bill. The wilderness did not strip her all at once. It was more efficient than that.
First went the title. Then the meetings she used to complain about. Then lunches downtown because there was no reason to be downtown. Then the casual confidence of saying, “I work at —” and watching people understand something about her before she finished the sentence. Opportunities came close enough to keep her hopeful.
A former colleague introduced her to someone. A recruiter loved her background. A vice president asked if she could talk Tuesday. A consulting lead sounded “very promising.” Each one gave her a few days in which the future had furniture again.
Then silence. She became skilled at following up without sounding like she was following up. Just circling back. Wanted to bring this to the top of your inbox. Hope you had a wonderful weekend. Checking in regarding next steps.
She hated next steps. There were never any steps. One morning she woke before everyone else and went downstairs without turning on the lights. Her Bible was on the chair by the window, where she had left it two nights earlier beneath a Nordstrom catalog. She sat. Outside, the street was still dark. A delivery truck stopped three houses down. Somewhere upstairs, Marcus coughed. Simone opened to Exodus.
She knew the story. Everybody knew the story. Israel leaves Egypt, complains in the wilderness, God sends manna. It had always seemed straightforward when taught by people standing behind pulpits in climate-controlled rooms. She read more slowly this time. The people were hungry. Not spiritually hungry. Hungry. They remembered Egypt selectively. They remembered pots of meat. Bread. Full stomachs. They did not mention bricks without straw. Simone understood that kind of memory.
She missed direct deposit enough to romanticize meetings that had made her miserable. Her eyes stopped at Exodus 16:4.
The Lord would rain bread from heaven. The people were to go out each day and gather enough for that day. Enough for that day. Not the quarter. Not retirement. Not even Friday. She read it again. For months she had been asking God to show her the whole thing. Where was she going? What was the job? What was the business supposed to become? How would they catch up?
What would happen if they didn’t?
That morning she asked a smaller question. What is here today? It was not a question she particularly liked. She preferred strategy. Strategy made fear wear a blazer. But she sat there long enough for the house to begin waking around her. A toilet flushed upstairs. Pipes knocked. Isaiah came down asking if there were waffles.
“Freezer,” she said.
“There’s only one.”
“Then there’s one.”
He shrugged and put it in the toaster. Simone watched him eat it standing at the counter, one sock on, completely untroubled by the absence of a second waffle. She almost laughed. After she dropped him at school, she came home and opened the unopened package by the door. Inside was a cream notebook she had ordered before leaving the firm. Embossed on the front in small gold letters were the words BEGIN ANYWAY. She rolled her eyes.
“Of course.”
She carried it to the kitchen table. On the first page she wrote the date. Underneath it: Enough for today.
She stared at the sentence, then added another.
Gather what falls.
She did not know where the phrase came from. It sounded like the manna story and not like it. She pictured the Israelites bending toward the ground in the morning, collecting something they had never seen before because hunger required them to trust what they did not recognize. She closed the notebook. At eleven fourteen, Francine called.
“You busy?”
“No.”
“That sounded depressing.”
“It was accurate.”
“I have a client who needs a communications plan. Small
thing. Probably two weeks. I told her about you.”
Simone sat up.
“How small?”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m asking because small can mean five hundred dollars and
fourteen rounds of revisions.”
“It’s twelve hundred.”
Simone looked toward the overdue notice on the counter.
“When does she need it?”
“Friday.”
Today was Wednesday.
“Of course she does.”
Francine laughed. “Do you want it or not?” Simone looked at the notebook.
“Yes.”
The client paid half that afternoon. Six hundred dollars. Not a job. Not a rescue. Not even enough to solve the problem Simone had been staring at all week. But enough to pay the electric bill and put gas in the car. She stood at the kitchen counter after submitting the payment and felt foolish for crying. When Marcus came home, his car sat in the driveway for a while before the front door opened. Simone noticed because she was waiting to tell him about the project.
“See?” he said, kissing her forehead. “It’s starting.”
Maybe. She wanted to believe him. That night, before bed, she opened the cream notebook. Under Gather what falls, she wrote: $600.
Then, after a moment: Today was fed.
She closed the notebook and set it on the nightstand.
The first time the lights went out, Simone thought the bulb had blown. She flipped the kitchen switch twice. Then the hallway.
Nothing. The refrigerator had gone quiet. She stood still long enough to hear the silence of the house.
“Oh no.”
She checked her phone. 4:38 p.m. Isaiah would be home from basketball at six. Marcus was working late. There was chicken thawing in the refrigerator and a load of wet clothes in the washing machine. The electric company had sent notices.
Simone knew that. She had moved them from the mail pile to the counter, from the counter to her desk, and from her desk into the part of her mind reserved for things she planned to fix with money that had not arrived. She called.
The representative was polite in the way people can be when your emergency is a category on their screen. The balance was more than Simone had.
“How much do I need to restore it?”
The woman gave her a number. Simone wrote it down even though she had already heard enough to know she could not pay it.
“Is there anything else?”
“There may be assistance programs in your area.”
“I mean today.”
A pause.
“No, ma’am.”
After they disconnected, Simone sat at the dining-room table.
She had $142 available. The restoration amount was $642.
Marcus could not cover it until payday, four days away. Their credit cards were nearly useless. She had an invoice out for a consulting project, but “net thirty” had become a phrase she despised more than “next steps.” She called Francine. Francine answered on the second ring.
“What happened?”
“How do you know something happened?”
“You never call me at four forty-five unless something
happened.”
Simone told her.
“How much?”
“No.”
“How much?”
“I’m not calling you for money.”
“Then why did you call?”
“I don’t know.”
She had not called with a plan. She had called because she could not sit alone at the table with the number. There was a silence.
“Six forty-two,” Simone said.
Francine exhaled.
“I don’t have six forty-two.”
“I know.”
“I can do three.”
“No.”
“Simone.”
“No. You helped with school last month.”
“I loaned you two hundred dollars.”
“Exactly.”
“And you paid me back.”
“Eventually.”
“Girl, send me the account number.”
Simone closed her eyes.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean I really hate this.”
“I know that too.”
Francine paid three hundred. Marcus found two hundred in an account Simone had forgotten they had. Simone used the hundred and forty-two left in checking. The power came back on at 9:17. Isaiah cheered from upstairs. Marcus opened the refrigerator and said, “We should probably throw out the chicken.” Simone stared at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You look like you want to kill me.”
“I just spent everything we have turning the electricity back
on and you opened the refrigerator and announced we need to throw away food.”
“So we should eat questionable chicken?”
She started laughing. She did not want to. It came out sharp and exhausted and then became real. Marcus looked at her for a second and started laughing too. They ordered one pizza with the twenty-dollar bill Isaiah had received from his grandfather for helping clean the garage.
“I’m investing in the family,” Isaiah said.
“You are not investing anything,” Simone told him. “I am
paying you back.”
“With interest?”
“Go upstairs.”
The next morning, Simone opened the cream notebook. She had intended to write about God providing. Instead she wrote Francine. Then Marcus. Then Isaiah’s pizza. Two weeks later, Francine called and asked if Simone could lend her fourteen dollars. Simone thought she had misheard.
“You need what?”
“Fourteen dollars. Don’t make it weird.”
“Why fourteen?”
“Because I have enough gas to get to work but not enough to
get home, and my card is overdrawn until tomorrow.”
Simone stood in the grocery-store parking lot with three bags in her trunk and $31.48 in her account. For a moment, she resented the request. The resentment embarrassed her immediately. Francine had sat on hold with the electric company for forty minutes. Francine had sent three hundred dollars without asking when it would come back. Francine had listened to Simone cry about things that were not, objectively, Francine’s responsibility. Still, Simone needed that thirty-one dollars. She sent fourteen.
Francine: Got it. Love you.
Simone: Love you too.
She drove home irritated with herself for calculating what remained. Seventeen dollars and forty-eight cents. At a red light, she heard the thought clearly enough to answer it. You gave away almost half of what you had.
“Yes,” she said aloud.
The driver beside her glanced over. She looked straight ahead.
The envelope arrived on a Tuesday. Simone almost threw it away because it looked like every other medical mailing she received after an appointment: white envelope, hospital logo, her name visible through the little plastic window. She opened it while standing over the trash. Your recent mammogram requires additional imaging. She read the sentence twice. Then she read everything underneath it without understanding any of it. Dense breast tissue. Asymmetry. Diagnostic mammogram.
Ultrasound if indicated.
Please call to schedule. The kitchen was warm. Something was simmering on the stove. Isaiah was at the table complaining about a science assignment.
“Mom?”
She folded the letter.
“What?”
“Did you hear me?”
“No. Sorry.”
“I said Mr. Harmon gave us a project today and it’s due
Monday. That’s not even a week.”
“That is, in fact, almost a week.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“Which comes before Monday.”
He groaned. Simone put the letter beneath a grocery circular.
She did not tell Marcus that night. She told herself it was because there was nothing to tell. Callbacks happened. Dense breasts were common. The letter did not say cancer. The letter did not even say mass. It said additional imaging. At 2:13 in the morning she was reading about breast cancer survival rates on her phone. Marcus shifted beside her.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
She turned the screen facedown. The lie sat between them for another two days. The diagnostic appointment was the following Thursday. At the imaging center, a woman with silver glasses handed Simone a gown that opened in the front.
“Everything from the waist up. Deodorant too, if you’re
wearing any. There are wipes in the room.”
Simone nodded as though she did this every day. The room was colder than it needed to be. She changed, put her clothes in the locker, and carried the key around her wrist on a blue plastic coil. There were three other women in the waiting area wearing the same gown. One was reading a magazine. Another was staring at the television with the sound off. Nobody spoke.
Simone wondered whether they were all scared. The first images hurt more than she remembered.
“Hold your breath.”
The machine pressed harder.
“Don’t move.”
She stared at a beige wall.
“Okay. Breathe.”
The technician looked at the screen. Simone tried to read her face. People who worked in medicine must be trained not to have faces.
“I’m going to take one more.”
“Did you see something?”
“The radiologist requested a different view.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The technician looked at her then.
“I know.”
She was kind, which frightened Simone more. After the additional images, the technician led her back to the waiting room.
“Just stay in your gown. The radiologist is going to review
these. We may need an ultrasound.”
“How long?”
“Usually not too long.”
Not too long turned out to be twenty-eight minutes. Simone knew because there was a clock directly across from her. She could not use her phone. It was in the locker. At first she thought about herself. Then, unexpectedly, she thought about her mother. Not her mother dying. Not the funeral. Not the last weeks when everyone had known something was ending. She thought about all the appointments before Simone knew to be afraid. Her mother had gone places alone. She must have sat in rooms.
She must have waited for people to come back with results.
She must have driven home afterward. Simone remembered being sixteen and angry because her mother had forgotten to buy poster board for a school project. She had been merciless about it.
“You said you would.”
“I know.”
“I need it tomorrow.”
“I said I know, Simone.”
Her mother had gone back out that night. For years Simone remembered the argument as evidence that her mother always came through. Sitting in the mammography gown, she wondered for the first time where her mother had been that afternoon. A door opened. Not hers. The woman with the magazine was called. Simone looked at the clock. There were entire countries inside the people we loved. Places they never took us. The thought was so simple it hurt.
Her mother had had a life that did not begin when Simone entered the room. Fears she had swallowed before making dinner. Phone calls she had ended before school pickup.
Questions she had carried while asking Simone whether she had finished her homework. Simone put both hands between her knees because they were cold. When the technician finally returned, she smiled.
“The radiologist wants the ultrasound, but she is not seeing
anything alarming on the additional views.”
Simone nodded too quickly.
“Okay.”
“Come with me.”
The ultrasound found a tiny benign cyst. Nothing. The word was beautiful. Nothing suspicious. Nothing requiring biopsy.
Nothing to do except return the following year. Simone got dressed. In the parking lot, she called Marcus.
“Hey,” he answered. “What’s up?”
“I had a mammogram.”
A pause.
“Today?”
“A follow-up.”
“Follow-up from what?”
“They called me back.”
Another pause, longer.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Simone.”
“It’s fine.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I know.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
She looked through the windshield at a woman loading a stroller into an SUV.
“I didn’t want it to become real before it was real.”
Marcus was quiet. Then he said, “You don’t get to decide by yourself what I can handle.” She closed her eyes. He was right.
She hated that he was right while she was still sitting in the parking lot trying not to cry.
“I know.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
“Come home,” he said.
She did. That night, after Isaiah went upstairs, Simone opened the cream notebook. She did not write God protected me from cancer. She could not. Women had prayed in those rooms and received different news. She wrote about her mother. Three pages.
By November, the Jaguar Land Rover opportunity had acquired a name in the Avery household. The Job. Not a job. The Job. It began with a recruiter who called while Simone was in Target deciding whether laundry detergent was cheaper by the ounce or whether she was simply standing in aisle twelve doing math because anxiety needed somewhere to go.
“I came across your background,” the recruiter said.
Simone pushed the cart into a quiet corner near seasonal décor. The role was senior enough to make leaving her old firm feel intelligent in retrospect. The salary was more than she had been making. The work sounded like the kind of work she wanted to do next rather than the kind she already knew how to survive. She interviewed once. Then twice. Then with someone whose calendar had been nearly impossible to get onto, which Simone interpreted as a good sign because she had become a scholar of signs.
The final interview lasted fifty-six minutes.
“You’re exactly the kind of strategic thinker we need,” the
executive told her.
Simone wrote the sentence down afterward. Exactly. Need.
She called Francine from the parking lot.
“I think I got it.”
“You got an offer?”
“No.”
“So you think you got it.”
“Don’t ruin this.”
“I’m not ruining it. I’m keeping nouns and verbs in their
proper places.”
Simone laughed.
“They loved me.”
“I’m sure they did.”
“He said exactly the kind of strategic thinker they need.”
“That’s good.”
“Exactly.”
“I heard you.”
“They’re moving quickly.”
Francine was quiet for half a beat.
“Then let them move.”
For four days, Simone let them. On day five she emailed the recruiter. Thank you again for coordinating such thoughtful conversations. I remain very excited about the opportunity and look forward to hearing about next steps. The recruiter responded within an hour. Great feedback all around. We should have an update shortly. Simone showed Marcus.
“See?”
He smiled. “I see.” They let themselves make plans. Not wild ones. Responsible plans. Catch up the school account. Pay Francine back. Fix the brakes before winter. Maybe replace the mattress in the guest room, which had been leaning against the basement wall since a pipe leaked in spring. Simone did not buy anything. But in her mind, she spent the salary many times. A week passed. Then another. The recruiter stopped responding.
Simone emailed once more. Nothing.
She called and left a voicemail she immediately regretted because her voice sounded too bright. Nothing. Thanksgiving came. The Job remained suspended in the strange territory between no and not yet. At dinner, Marcus’s sister asked,
“Whatever happened with that car company?” Simone reached
for the cranberry sauce.
“They’re still working through the process.”
Francine, sitting across from her, looked down at her plate.
After dinner Simone cornered her in the kitchen.
“What?”
“What what?”
“You made a face.”
“I looked at my plate.”
“You looked at your plate in a way.”
Francine turned from the sink.
“Do you want me to say it?”
“No.”
“Then stop asking.”
Simone crossed her arms. Francine dried her hands.
“Baby, if they wanted you to know something, you would
know something.”
“That’s not necessarily true.”
“Okay.”
“Hiring slows down around holidays.”
“It does.”
“The recruiter said the feedback was good.”
“She did.”
“So why are you acting like I’m delusional?”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Francine lowered her voice.
“I think you are standing at a door that has not opened,
calling the hallway a room.”
Simone stared at her.
“That’s very poetic.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
“I need this job.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know.”
Francine’s expression changed. Simone heard herself too late.
Francine put the dish towel down.
“You’re right.”
“Fran—”
“No. You’re right. I don’t know exactly what it feels like to be
you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“But I know what it feels like to watch you make yourself sick
waiting for people to choose you.”
Simone looked away. In the living room, somebody laughed.
Francine stepped closer.
“If they call, praise God. Take the job. Buy me a steak. But
until then, stop living like money that does not exist belongs to you.”
The sentence made Simone angry because it was practical.
She left early. At home, she opened the cream notebook and wrote:
Do not get excited until it is signed.
She underlined it twice, closed the notebook and went to bed.
The second shutoff happened on Isaiah’s birthday. Simone had been awake since six trying to make the day look more expensive than it was. She taped black and gold streamers across the dining-room doorway. She arranged twelve cupcakes from the grocery store on the cake stand her mother had given her. She put his gifts on the table: headphones, a sweatshirt he had pointed out twice at the mall, and a pair of sneakers Marcus’s brother had bought after Simone admitted they could not. Isaiah came downstairs at 7:03.
He stopped on the last stair.
“You did all this?”
“Obviously.”
He grinned. For a few minutes, Simone forgot everything.
That was one of the strange mercies of children. They could make a room complete before you had finished counting what was missing. After school, three boys came over. They ate pizza, yelled at a video game, argued about a foul nobody could prove had happened, and left crumbs everywhere. At six, Simone went into the kitchen to heat more food. The stove would not light.
She tried again. Click. Click. Click. Nothing. Then she noticed the refrigerator. No hum.
Her stomach dropped before she touched the switch. Dark.
“No.”
She tried the hallway. Nothing. Not today. She stood in the kitchen with one hand on the wall. From the living room came Isaiah’s laugh. The utility company had not received the payment arrangement she thought had been processed. There had been a returned payment weeks earlier. The account now required cleared funds before restoration. Simone called Francine.
“I need you not to say anything.”
“Okay.”
“The lights are off.”
Francine was silent.
“It’s Isaiah’s birthday.”
“Oh, Simone.”
“I said don’t say anything.”
“I didn’t.”
“I can’t do this.”
“Where’s Marcus?”
“On his way.”
“What do they need?”
“It doesn’t matter. They won’t take another arrangement.
They want cleared funds.”
“How much?”
“Francine, they won’t—”
“How much?”
Simone told her. Francine did not have it. Neither did Marcus.
Neither did anyone Simone could think of without making a list of people she had already asked for too much. She sat on the kitchen floor. Not elegantly. Not like prayer. She sat because her legs were tired. On the counter above her were the cupcakes.
One remained, the icing disturbed where somebody had swiped a finger through it. Her son was still laughing. She covered her mouth. There were humiliations you could survive privately.
Then there were humiliations that entered your children’s birthdays. Marcus came through the back door. He looked at the light switch, then at her.
“What happened?”
She told him. He rubbed both hands over his face.
“Okay.”
“It’s not okay.”
“I know. I mean okay, let me think.”
“I already thought.”
“Simone.”
“I called. I begged. I asked for a supervisor. They said no.”
“Then let me call.”
“They said no.”
He called anyway. Simone hated him for having hope after she had exhausted hers. She hated herself for hating him. One of the boys came into the kitchen.
“Mrs. Avery, can we have the last cupcake?”
Simone looked at him.
“Sure.”
He took it and left. Marcus was on hold. Simone started crying. Quietly at first. Then not quietly. Marcus lowered the phone.
“Come here.”
“Don’t.”
“Simone.”
“Don’t touch me right now.”
He sat on the floor across from her instead. For several minutes they listened to hold music.
“This is his birthday,” she said.
“I know.”
“He is going to remember this.”
“He might remember the pizza and his friends and the
sneakers.”
“He’s going to remember the lights going out.”
“Maybe.”
She looked at him.
“Maybe?”
“I’m not going to lie to you.”
That made her cry harder. Marcus reached across the floor and took her hand. The representative returned. Marcus explained. The representative repeated the policy. Marcus asked for a supervisor. The supervisor repeated the policy. They hung up.
“See?” Simone said.
Marcus did not answer. She pulled her hand away and stood.
“No.”
He looked up.
“No what?”
“No.”
She wiped her face with both hands.
“I am not ending his birthday sitting on this floor.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
She went upstairs. In the bathroom she locked the door. She did not pray beautifully. She did not quote Scripture. She said,
“God, please.” Then again.
“Please.”
She sat on the closed toilet and stared at the dark mirror.
“I have nothing else.”
That was all. When she came downstairs, the boys were gathering their things. One parent had arrived. Nobody mentioned the lights. Isaiah hugged his friends at the door.
“Best birthday,” he said.
Simone looked at Marcus. He looked back. After the last boy left, Marcus went to get candles from the garage. Simone stood in the foyer. Her hand found the switch without thinking. She flipped it. Light. For one second she did not understand what she was seeing. The chandelier above the dining table was on.
“Marcus.”
He came in from the garage.
“What?”
She pointed. He stared.
“Did you—”
“No.”
“The company?”
“They said no.”
He walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The light came on. Isaiah shouted from upstairs.
“Power’s back!”
Simone did not move. She called Francine.
“They turned it on.”
“What?”
“They turned it on.”
“I thought they said—”
“They did.”
“Did Marcus pay it?”
“No.”
“Did somebody—”
“No.”
Francine went quiet. Simone leaned against the wall. Neither woman tried to explain it. That night, after everyone went to bed, Simone opened the notebook. Her hand hovered over the page. She wanted to write Miracle. She did. Then she stared at the word. A miracle was a dangerous thing to name when you still owed the bill.
The electricity being restored did not erase the balance. It did not guarantee it would stay on. It did not mean God had chosen her family for special treatment over the family down the street whose lights might still be dark. But the lights had come on after the company said they would not. That was also true. She left the word. Underneath it she wrote: I don't know what happened.
For once, she let not knowing remain.
Francine called in January and said, “Pack a bag.” Simone was standing in the basement beside a laundry basket.
“For what?”
“You’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“Jamaica.”
Simone laughed. Francine did not.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I cannot go to Jamaica.”
“You have a passport.”
“That is not the issue.”
“What’s the issue?”
“Money.”
“Handled.”
“By who?”
“Me. Mostly. The room was already covered, and Tasha
backed out.”
“No.”
“Then call it my birthday present.”
“Your birthday was in August.”
“Your birthday present to me.”
“That makes less sense.”
“Good. Pack.”
Simone sat on the bottom stair.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I owe you money.”
“You owe everybody money in your mind.”
“I actually owe you money.”
“And I am not asking for it today.”
“I can’t leave Marcus and Isaiah.”
“You are leaving them for four days, not joining the circus.”
“I have work.”
“You have a laptop.”
“Francine.”
“Simone.”
There was a firmness in her voice that made Simone stop.
“I am watching you disappear,” Francine said.
Simone looked at the laundry.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you are functional. Different word.”
“I can’t accept a trip.”
“You accepted three hundred dollars when the lights went
out.”
“Because the lights were out.”
“So you can receive only when the situation is sufficiently
humiliating?”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s exactly fair.”
Simone stood.
“I have to call you back.”
“No, you don’t. Flight is Friday at nine twenty.”
“You bought it already?”
“Yes.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do right now.”
“Pack something white.”
The resort was the kind of place Simone would have photographed differently two years earlier. Then, she would have taken pictures of the lobby, the view from the room, the breakfast tray floating in the pool. She would have posted one photograph at sunset and let people assume things about her life. This time, she took almost no pictures. The first morning she woke at six out of habit. Francine was asleep in the other bed.
Simone stepped onto the balcony. The sea was so blue it looked edited.
For several minutes she felt nothing but relief. Then guilt arrived. She thought about Marcus going to work. Isaiah needing a ride to basketball. The electric bill. The school balance. The credit card. The invoice she needed to send. She opened her laptop. Francine spoke without opening her eyes.
“If you start working, I am throwing that into the ocean.”
“I’m sending one email.”
“No.”
“You are asleep.”
“I can hear anxiety typing.”
Simone shut the laptop. At breakfast, Francine ordered enough food for four people.
“Why do you do this?”
“Because I like options.”
“You waste food.”
“I am not taking criticism before coffee.”
They sat outside. A server placed a plate of mango between them. Francine took a piece.
“So.”
“No.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to ask how you are.”
“I’m in Jamaica.”
“That is geography.”
Simone looked toward the water.
“I don’t know.”
“Better.”
“I’m tired.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix.”
Francine nodded. Simone continued.
“I feel like every day I wake up and something is already due.
Money, an answer, work, somebody needs something. And when something good happens, I don’t even enjoy it because I’m trying to figure out how long it lasts.”
Francine did not interrupt.
“I keep thinking if I can just get to the next thing, I can
breathe. The job. A client. A check. Something. Then the thing comes and it pays one bill and there’s another one standing behind it.”
She laughed once.
“I sound ungrateful.”
“No. You sound tired.”
Simone picked at the edge of her napkin.
“I prayed for enough.”
“Maybe stop acting surprised when enough keeps showing
up.”
Simone looked at her.
“That is deeply annoying.”
“I know.”
“I don't want enough forever.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“I want more than enough. I want savings. I want to pay
something before the due date. I want to go to dinner without doing arithmetic. I want to buy my son sneakers because he needs sneakers, not because his uncle noticed before I could figure it out.”
“Then want that.”
“Doesn’t that make all this gratitude fake?”
“No.”
Francine leaned back.
“Why do you think gratitude means you have to like the
situation?”
Simone had no answer. The server came with coffee. She ate until she was full without calculating what the meal cost. That afternoon, she swam because the water was warm. She floated on her back until Francine yelled from a chair that she was going to miss lunch. That night she opened the notebook and wrote:
Today was good.
She considered adding something, decided she was tired, closed the notebook, and turned out the light.
The call from school came at 1:26 on a Wednesday.
“Mrs. Avery, this is Dr. Collins.”
Simone sat straighter at her desk.
“Is Isaiah okay?”
“He’s fine physically.”
The word physically did what it always did to a mother.
“What happened?”
There had been money missing from a teacher’s desk. Forty dollars. A student said he had seen Isaiah near the desk during lunch. Isaiah denied taking it. The school checked a hallway camera. He had gone into the classroom when nobody was there.
“Did the camera show him taking the money?”
“No. There’s no camera inside the classroom.”
“Then you don’t know that he took it.”
“No. We don’t.”
Simone heard herself becoming professionally calm.
“What exactly are you asking me to do?”
“We’d like you and Mr. Avery to come in.”
“I can be there in thirty minutes.”
In the car, anger came before fear. Not at Isaiah. At the school.
At whoever had accused him. At the ease with which a boy could become a story. She rehearsed questions at red lights. By the time she reached the office, she was ready. Then she saw Isaiah.
He was sitting in a chair outside the principal’s office with his hood pulled over his head. He would not look at her. She sat beside him.
“Look at me.”
He didn’t.
“Isaiah.”
He looked. She knew. Mothers did not know everything. The mammography room had taught her that. Children had countries too. But she knew this.
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
“Do not answer fast.”
“I didn’t.”
“Isaiah.”
“I said I didn’t.”
Dr. Collins opened the door.
“Mrs. Avery?”
The meeting lasted forty minutes. The school had no proof.
Isaiah maintained his story. Simone defended him. She defended him so well that by the end Dr. Collins apologized for the distress and said they would continue looking into it. In the parking lot, Simone unlocked the car. Isaiah got in. She did not start the engine.
“Last chance.”
He stared ahead.
“Mom.”
“Last chance before we go home and your father gets
involved.”
“I didn’t take it.”
She started the car. At home, Isaiah went upstairs. Simone stood in the kitchen feeling sick. Twenty minutes later, she went to his room to collect his phone. He was in the shower. The sweatshirt he had worn to school was on the floor. She picked it up. A twenty-dollar bill fell from the pocket. Then another.
Simone sat on the edge of his bed. The shower ran. She looked at the money in her hand. Forty dollars. When Isaiah came out, towel around his waist, he saw her. Then he saw the bills. His face changed.
Simone had imagined motherhood would prepare her for disappointment. It did not.
“Get dressed.”
“Mom—”
“Get dressed.”
He started crying.
“Please.”
“Clothes. Now.”
Downstairs, Marcus came through the door while Isaiah was still dressing. Simone held up the money. Marcus looked at it.
“What is that?”
She told him. His jaw tightened.
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs.”
Marcus moved toward the stairs.
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“I need a minute.”
“He stole from a teacher and lied to your face.”
“I know what he did.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Simone looked at him. Because something old had entered the room. She recognized it. Shame. Not Isaiah’s. Hers. The feeling that one bad thing revealed everything. That this meant they had failed. That other people would know. That the school would look at them differently.
Her own father had been able to turn one lie into a character indictment that lasted years. Liar. Sneak. Can’t trust you. She had promised herself she would never do that. Promises were easy before your child gave you the opportunity to break them.
Isaiah came downstairs. Marcus pointed to the chair.
“Sit.”
He sat.
“Why?”
Isaiah cried harder.
“I don’t know.”
“That is not an answer,” Marcus said.
“I wanted to buy something.”
“What?”
Isaiah said nothing.
“What?”
“A game.”
Simone stared at him.
“You stole forty dollars from your teacher for a game?”
“My friends have it.”
Marcus stood. Simone touched his arm.
“Sit down.”
He looked at her.
“Please.”
He sat. Simone turned to Isaiah.
“You let me walk into that school and defend you.”
Isaiah wiped his face.
“I know.”
“No. I need you to understand that part. I sat in that office and
questioned people because I believed you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I believe you because I am your mother. That is not
something you get to use against me.”
He began to sob. Simone wanted to stop. She wanted to hug him and end the discomfort. Instead she stayed.
“You are going back tomorrow. You are returning the money.
You are telling Dr. Collins and your teacher exactly what you did.”
“They’ll suspend me.”
“Maybe.”
“Mom, please.”
“You did something that has consequences.”
“Please.”
“I will stand next to you while you tell the truth. I will not lie
for you.”
He looked at her then.
“Are you mad at me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you hate me?”
The question broke something open. Simone moved from her chair and knelt in front of him.
“No.”
“But—”
“No. Listen to me. What you did was wrong. It was wrong
before you lied and worse after you lied. We are going to deal with all of it. But you are not what you did.”
Isaiah cried into both hands. She pulled him against her.
Marcus put a hand on the back of his neck. The next morning, they returned the money. Isaiah was suspended for three days.
Simone did not tell Francine until that evening.
“I feel like I failed him,” she said.
“You didn’t steal the forty dollars.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I defended him.”
“Because he lied convincingly.”
“I should have known.”
“You did know.”
“Not soon enough.”
Francine sighed.
“Simone, motherhood is not clairvoyance.”
That made her laugh despite herself.
By spring, Simone had become good at surviving things she did not want to become good at surviving. She knew which bills could be late without immediate consequence. She knew how many miles she could drive after the gas light came on. She knew the exact tone to use when asking a company for an extension. She knew how to make a respectable dinner from eggs, rice, frozen spinach and one chicken breast. She also knew how to answer “How are you?” in ways that were not lies but did not invite follow-up.
“Taking it day by day.”
“Busy.”
“God is good.”
All true. None complete. Work came in pieces. A communications project here. A short contract there. An event.
A presentation. A month that looked promising until two invoices were late at the same time. The Job never called.
Eventually Simone saw the position posted again with a different title. She stared at the listing for several minutes. Then she closed the browser. She did not email anyone.
This should have felt like growth. Instead it felt like grief. She had built an entire version of the future around a door that had never opened. For weeks after, she was angry in small ways. At Marcus for leaving dishes in the sink. At Isaiah for needing poster board at nine o’clock at night. At Francine for being five minutes late. At women online who announced promotions with photographs taken in professional studios. One Saturday, Marcus found her at the dining-room table with bank statements spread around her.
“You’ve been sitting here for three hours.”
“I’m figuring things out.”
“Did the numbers change?”
She looked up. “What?”
“You checked them this morning.”
“I’m making a plan.”
“For what?”
“For our life, Marcus.”
He pulled out a chair. “Okay.” She hated the okay.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have a face.”
“I have a face all the time.”
“You know what I mean.”
He looked at the statements.
“I think you’re trying to make numbers tell you something
they can’t tell you.”
“They can tell me exactly how much money we have.”
“Yes.”
“And exactly how much we owe.”
“Yes.”
“So what are you talking about?”
“They can’t tell you if we’re going to be okay.”
Simone looked at him.
“That is literally what they tell you.”
“No. They tell you whether we can pay everything today.”
“And we can’t.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“So maybe stop asking the checking account to prophesy.”
She almost smiled.
“Did you rehearse that?”
“No.”
“It sounded rehearsed.”
“It was good though.”
“It was annoying.”
“Also true.”
He reached for her hand. She let him take it.
“I’m tired too,” he said.
The sentence caught her off guard. She had become so accustomed to measuring his response to her fear that she had forgotten he had his own.
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
She pulled her hand back. Marcus looked toward the window.
“I go to work every day knowing it’s not enough. I know
you’re looking at me sometimes wondering why I can’t fix more.
I know when you call Francine, even if you never say it.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I didn’t say you blame me.”
“You just did.”
“I said I know.”
Simone stood.
“I am not doing this.”
“That’s the problem.”
“What?”
“We never do this.”
“Do what?”
“Say the ugly part.”
She stared at him. Marcus’s voice stayed low.
“You think you are carrying this family alone.”
“I did not say that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“That is not what I think.”
“Then tell me what you think.”
Simone opened her mouth. Nothing came. Because there were thoughts she had not allowed herself to finish. That she was angry he could not make more money. That she was angry at herself for leaving. That she was angry every time he said they would figure it out because figuring it out often meant she would call somebody, sell something, find a client, negotiate something, or go without. That she loved him. That she resented him. That both things could apparently occupy the same room.
“I think I am scared all the time,” she said.
Marcus nodded. “Me too.”
“I think if I stop thinking about everything, something terrible
will happen because I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I know.”
“I think I’m angry at you for not being able to fix it.”
He looked down. There it was. Ugly and alive.
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded again.
“I’m angry at you for leaving your job sometimes.”
She inhaled. He continued before she could answer.
“And I hate myself for that because I know why you left.”
Simone sat. Neither spoke. The clock in the kitchen ticked. A lawn mower started somewhere outside.
“This is horrible,” she said.
Marcus laughed once. “Yeah.”
“I preferred when we were pretending.”
“Me too.”
She started crying. He did not tell her not to. After a while, he moved his chair closer. They sat there with the bills between them. Nothing was fixed. That evening, Simone went upstairs and opened the notebook. She found the page from months earlier. Do not get excited until it is signed. She ran her finger over the words. At the time she had believed she was learning discernment.
She had stopped getting excited about almost everything. A possible client. A good meeting. A promising email. A compliment. A quiet week. A day when nobody called with bad news. She read the sentence again. It sounded less like wisdom now. She crossed out the sentence. Not violently. One line.
Under it she wrote: Hope is not a contract.
Then:
It does not have to be.
She turned back through the notebook.
Enough for today.
I don't know what happened. Today was good. She turned another page, then another. Some entries embarrassed her now.
A few she no longer believed. Others she understood differently than when she wrote them.
She tore out one page. It was an old list of debts, most of them outdated, written during a night she had not slept. On the back she had written, in large letters: HOW DID I LET THIS HAPPEN?
She looked at it for a long time. Then she ripped it in half.
Again. Again. She dropped the pieces in the wastebasket. There was no ceremony. She brushed a scrap of paper from her lap and went downstairs to make dinner.
The call came at 4:52 on a Monday. Simone was in the grocery store after a meeting that might become work. Might. Her cart held chicken, broccoli, cereal, coffee, bread, apples, milk, and a small bunch of yellow tulips she had picked up and put down twice before finally leaving them in. Her phone rang. The school.
For half a second her body remembered forty dollars. She answered.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Avery?”
“Yes.”
“This is Ms. Lane from the nurse’s office. Isaiah is okay, but he
had a fall during practice.”
Simone closed her eyes.
“What kind of fall?”
“He landed on his wrist. There’s some swelling. We
recommend you have it looked at.”
“I’m coming.”
She abandoned the cart near frozen foods. In the car, she called Marcus. Voicemail. She called Francine. No answer. For one old, familiar second, panic reached for everything. The wrist would be broken. The emergency room would cost money they did not have. The meeting would not turn into work. The groceries would have to wait. The week would unravel. She put the car in reverse, stopped long enough to check behind her, and backed out.
At school, Isaiah sat with an ice pack on his wrist. When he saw her, his face crumpled.
“It hurts.”
“I know.”
“Dad coming?”
“I couldn’t reach him yet.”
“Is it broken?”
“I don’t know.”
She sat beside him. He leaned into her the way he had not done in public for years. At urgent care, they waited. The television played a home-renovation show with subtitles. Isaiah rested his head on her shoulder. Her phone buzzed. Marcus. She told him where they were.
“I’m leaving now.”
“You don’t have to rush. We’re waiting for X-rays.”
“I’m coming.”
After they hung up, another message appeared. The woman from the meeting. Wonderful speaking today. We’d like to move forward. I’ll send the agreement tomorrow. Simone read it.
Tomorrow. Agreement. Not signed. She could hear the old rule.
Do not get excited. Isaiah shifted against her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You smiled.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the message again.
“We might have some good news.”
“What?”
“A project.”
“Like money?”
She laughed.
“Eventually, yes.”
“How much?”
“You are too involved in my finances.”
“You tell everybody we’re broke.”
Simone turned toward him.
“I do not tell everybody we’re broke.”
“You told Aunt Francine.”
“Aunt Francine is not everybody.”
“You told Dad.”
“Your father lives here.”
He smiled. She kissed the top of his head. The X-ray showed a sprain. Marcus arrived seven minutes after the doctor told them.
“You’re late,” Isaiah said.
“I came from across town.”
“It’s not broken.”
“I heard.”
“You could’ve stayed at work.”
Marcus looked at Simone. She smiled.
“He wanted you.”
Marcus sat on Isaiah’s other side. On the way home, they stopped for the groceries Simone had left behind. The cart was gone. Of course it was. She started again. Chicken. Broccoli.
Cereal. Coffee. Bread. Apples. Milk. At the flowers, she stopped.
The yellow tulips were still there. She put them in the cart.
“What are those for?” Isaiah asked.
“The table.”
“Why?”
“Because I want them.”
He accepted this. At checkout, Simone watched the total climb.
The total was higher than she expected. She checked it once, then paid. There was still money left. At home, Marcus made dinner while Simone answered the email. Thank you. I’m looking forward to working together. She did not add language about next steps. She did not ask when the agreement would arrive. She sent it. Then she opened the cream notebook. There were only a few blank pages left. She went back to the beginning.
Enough for today.
Gather what falls.
She smiled at the six hundred dollars written beneath it. She had been so sure. Manna was money. Sometimes it had been.
Sometimes provision had looked like a person answering the phone, or a few days away, or enough food for dinner.
Other things were simply painful. Women prayed and got different news.
Simone turned to a blank page. For a while she did not write.
Downstairs, Marcus and Isaiah were arguing about whether broccoli counted as food if it had cheese on it. She could smell garlic. Her phone was charging on the nightstand. Tomorrow there might be an agreement.
Or there might not. The thought hurt less than it once would have. She put her pen to the page.
I thought gathering meant holding on.
She stopped. Crossed it out. Too neat. She tried again.
Today I bought flowers.
That made her smile. She kept writing.
I bought flowers before the contract was signed. Isaiah sprained his wrist and scared me half to death. Marcus came anyway, even after I told him not to rush. We have groceries. The electric bill is due Thursday. I still don't know what happens next.
She looked at the page for a moment, then closed the notebook.
She sat on the edge of the bed until Marcus called up that dinner was ready.
She still wanted plenty. She prayed for it without apology: a full refrigerator, bills paid before their due dates, money saved, work that lasted, rest she did not have to borrow from somebody else’s generosity. She wanted to give Francine something extravagant one day and refuse to let her call it too much.
She went downstairs.
“Mom,” Isaiah called from the kitchen, “tell Dad broccoli is not
a real side.”
“It is literally a vegetable.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Marcus pointed the wooden spoon at him.
“See?”
Simone laughed. She put the tulips in a glass pitcher because she could not find the vase. At dinner, Isaiah complained about his wrist, then used the same injured hand to reach for a second piece of bread. Marcus caught him.
“Thought it hurt.”
“It does.”
“Apparently not around carbohydrates.”
Simone laughed again. For a few minutes, nobody talked about money. After dinner she stood at the sink rinsing plates.
Outside the kitchen window, rain had begun, soft at first and then steady. She watched it strike the dark glass. The rain took her back to the chair by the window months ago, Exodus open in her lap. Enough for the day. Bread from heaven. Gather. She looked at her hands in the dishwater and opened them.
Behind her, Isaiah dropped a fork. It hit the floor.
“Got it,” he said.
Simone turned. He bent down, picked it up, and carried it to the sink. She watched him do it.
Simone dried her hands. On the counter, the yellow tulips had begun to open.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Ferguson Peterson is a writer, communications strategist, and founder of Everyday Unstoppable, an editorial house created for women building lives, careers, ideas, and work of meaning. Gather What Falls is her first work of fiction.
ABOUT EVERYDAY UNSTOPPABLE
Everyday Unstoppable is an editorial house for ambitious women building a life, a vision, and themselves at the same time.
The House publishes stories, ideas, and objects rooted in courage, faith, beauty, work, and the complicated realities of building a meaningful life.
We are interested in what women build—and what it takes to keep building.
Gather What Falls is the House’s first work of fiction.
READING & DISCUSSION GUIDE These questions are designed to open the novel rather than explain it. Read them as invitations to return to the scenes, the silences, and the choices that shape Simone’s story.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Simone begins the novel by leaving a job she can no longer remain in, but the loss of work quickly becomes a loss of identity, certainty, and social position. What does she actually leave when she resigns—and what does she continue carrying long after she has gone?
2. Simone’s first notebook entry is “Enough for today.” By the end of the novel, what has changed about her understanding of “enough”? What, if anything, has not changed?
3. Money is a practical problem throughout the novel, but it also changes how Simone sees herself, Marcus, motherhood, work, generosity, and even hope. Which scene most clearly shows that financial scarcity is affecting more than the family’s bank account?
4. During the first shutoff, Simone struggles to receive help from Francine. Later, Francine asks Simone for fourteen dollars. What does that reversal reveal about giving, receiving, pride, dignity, and friendship?
5. In the mammography waiting room, Simone realizes,
“There were entire countries inside the people we loved.
Places they never took us.” How does that realization change the way she understands her mother? Where does that idea return later in Simone’s relationship with Isaiah?
6. The Jaguar Land Rover opportunity becomes “The Job”
before Simone ever receives an offer. What does the job come to represent beyond employment or salary? Was Simone wrong to hope for it? Where does the novel draw the line between hope and certainty?
7. The electricity returns on Isaiah’s birthday after the utility company has said it will not. The novel never explains why.
What would be gained—or lost—if the book provided an explanation? How does the unanswered question shape your reading of faith in the novel?
8. In Jamaica, Simone says, “I don’t want enough forever.”
Why is that moment important? How does the novel hold gratitude and desire together without treating either one as a moral failure?
9. When Isaiah steals forty dollars and lies, Simone insists that he face the consequence while refusing to make the act his identity. What is she trying to interrupt in that moment? How does her own history with shame influence the way she mothers him?
10. Marcus tells Simone, “You think you are carrying this family alone,” and eventually they both say the parts they have been avoiding. What had each of them misunderstood—or failed to see—about what the other was carrying? Did this conversation change how you understood either character?
11. Simone’s notebook records facts, conclusions, fears, prayers, and rules she makes for herself. Which entry changes meaning most dramatically by the time she reads it again? What does the notebook reveal about the difference between recording an experience and understanding it?
12. Simone crosses out “Do not get excited until it is signed”
and replaces it with “Hope is not a contract.” What has the earlier rule protected her from? What has it cost her?
13. By the final chapter, Simone recognizes that some things have been provision and other things have simply been painful. How does this distinction change the novel’s treatment of faith? Which events resist being turned into a lesson or explanation?
14. Simone buys the yellow tulips before the agreement is signed. Why do the flowers matter? What is different about this choice from the ways she tried to reassure or protect herself earlier in the book?
15. The novel ends without the contract, without financial resolution, and without an explanation for everything that happened. Instead, the tulips begin to open. What does the ending resolve—and what does it deliberately leave unresolved? How does the final image change your understanding of the title, Gather What Falls?
GO DEEPER
For readers and groups who want to move from the novel into personal reflection: ● Simone eventually recognizes that some of what she called wisdom was fear trying to protect her. Is there a belief, rule, or habit in your own life that may have begun as protection but now deserves another look?
● Simone is often more comfortable giving than receiving.
Where, if anywhere, do you recognize that tension in yourself?
● What would “buying the flowers before the contract is signed” mean in your own life—not as recklessness, but as permission to experience something good before everything is certain?
● Simone learns that she does not have to keep carrying something simply because it happened. What is the difference between remembering what formed you and continuing to carry it?
