It was Amelia’s night to make supper. Salad and leftover grilled chicken. Her mom had been on a diet, on and off, since she’d seen Candice at the hockey game the night she and Amelia went to watch the Canucks.
Candice was Amelia’s dad’s new wife. Well, not wife—they weren’t married yet, but they might as well be. “He calls her Candy. Can you believe it?” Diane had said incredulously. “She’s had twins, for God’s sake, and now another baby, and she must be a size six!”
“Who cares, Mom?” Amelia thought her mom looked good. Maybe a little bit like she was squeezed into those new jeans she’d bought, but she had gorgeous honey-colored hair and great skin. Amelia always loved it when people told her she looked like her mom, even though it wasn’t totally true. Amelia’s hair was ordinary brown, and lately she’d noticed blackheads on her nose.
This was one of the weeks when Diane was on a diet. Amelia rinsed the lettuce and chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers and carrots. She put the salad in the fridge, grabbed her backpack and flopped down in the living room in front of the TV.
She spread out her homework on the coffee table, a page of long division and a paragraph for language arts that answered the questions Who? What? When? Where? and Why? She decided to write about a guy on Dr. Phil who cheated on his wife. The Why? was the hardest part. She set to work, and after one rerun of Family Guy and one episode of Dragon’s Den, she was done.
She heard her mom at the front door and hopped up to help her. Grocery bags dangled from Diane’s arms. Strands of hair had escaped from her ponytail, and her tan looked faded.
Diane let the bags slide to the floor. “Well?”
“They like it.”
“Bingo.” Diane grinned.
Amelia grinned back.
Diane’s smile evaporated. “Your tooth! Oh God, sweetie, I forgot to phone the dentist.”
“Mom, Gabriella’s from Paris!”
“Tell me all about it while we eat. I’m famished.”
Before they dug into the salad, they raised their glasses of apple juice and clinked them together.
“To Great-Aunt Mildred,” Diane said.
They always toasted Great-Aunt Mildred at supper. Great-Aunt Mildred (Diane’s father’s aunt) had died the summer before and left her house to Diane. Fortuitous timing, Diane had said after she got over feeling guilty (she had never visited the old lady and had actually thought she’d died years earlier). No one knew why Mildred had left her house to Diane, but she had. The house had a tiny mortgage that Diane’s job at Miss Jane’s was just enough to cover.
The house was okay, but it was nothing like their old place—a heritage house on the west side of Vancouver. Heritage meant that it was old but in a beautiful way, with real oak beams, hardwood floors, leaded stained-glass windows and a fireplace mantel carved by someone famous.
Now Candice’s seven-year-old twins, Kelsey and Kaitlin, were in Amelia’s old room, and the den had been turned into a nursery for the new baby, Sam. Amelia had never been back to her house, not once. She refused, even on Christmas Eve when “Candy” invited her to help make cookies for Santa with the girls and open presents.
Great-Aunt Mildred’s house was a bungalow on the east side of Vancouver. It was old too—“post-war stucco,” Diane called it—but there was nothing about it that you would want to preserve. It had linoleum in the kitchen, beige wall-to-wall carpet in the living room, and tiny square pink tiles in the bathroom, which Diane said were “very retro.” The best thing about it was the apartment in the basement.
The doorbell rang when they got to dessert—gluten-free chocolate-chip cookies from a bakery on Hastings Street. It was Duke and Gabriella. Amelia made the introductions, and Gabriella beamed and said, “Enchantée.” Then Amelia cleared the dishes, Diane got out a pen and the papers for the rental agreement, and they all sat around the kitchen table.
“We’ll go month by month for now,” Diane said.
“Perfect.” Gabriella picked up the pen and started filling in information.
Amelia watched Gabriella write, admiring her nails, which were long, tapered and painted bright purple. Gabriella put the pen down. “There. I put both of our cell numbers, so if there’s an emergency or something, you can reach one of us.”
“Do you have day jobs?” Diane said.
What her mom really meant was, Can you pay the rent each month? Amelia crossed her fingers.
“I give pedicures and manicures in a little salon on Cassiar Street,” Gabriella said.
“I work from home,” Duke said. “I do consulting work.”
“Really. Consulting for what?”
“Lots of things.” Duke glanced at Gabriella. “Some of my clients might be coming around. I hope that’s okay.”
“Well, yes,” Diane said slowly. “I can’t see that being a problem. I have to admit, you’re both much younger than I was expecting. I really should have asked you for references…you do have references, don’t you?”
“Oh,” Duke said. “Well, not actually with us, but I’m sure we could get some.”
“Of course we could!” Gabriella said. “Our last landlords liked us very much!”
Diane gazed at Gabriella. “Did they? Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. No one else wants the apartment. And now, how about some iced tea? And Amelia, you could put those cookies on a plate.”
“Iced tea and cookies on such a hot night,” Gabriella said. “Délicieux!”
Amelia set her alarm clock for twenty minutes to twelve. Whatever was happening at midnight, she would be ready. She brushed her teeth and popped into her mom’s room to say goodnight.
Diane was in bed, reading a textbook. She was taking courses at Vancouver Career College to be a massage therapist. She said she wasn’t going to work for minimum wage selling old ladies clothes at Miss Jane’s forever. Lots of times, if Amelia got up for a drink in the middle of the night, she’d find her mom snoring with an open book on her lap.
“Can I get a tattoo?” Amelia said from the doorway.
“Amelia—”
“Please. Just a little one. It wouldn’t—”
“No. Absolutely not. Not a chance. You’re eleven years old. If I let you get a tattoo, you’ll want a lip ring next.”
“But—”
“No.” Diane stared down at her page. “And you can’t wear mascara either. Or dye your hair bright red.”
“I think Gabriella’s gorgeous!” Amelia said.
“Me too. She’s lovely. Now I’ve really got to finish this chapter. Off to bed, sweetie.”
Amelia paused in the doorway. “I just have one more thing to say. You don’t know that Gabriella dyed her hair.”
Behind her book, Diane snorted.