“Holy SHIT!”
Maisy’s screams send Fern flying from her bedroom and down the stairs where she trips, bashing her baby toe against the baseboard at the bottom.
“Bugger! Bugger! Bugger-all!”
“Mom! I did it! I got in!”
Fern gathers herself, recognizing the weight of this moment, and soon they’re both jumping up and down, Fern on the foot she hasn’t just broken, and Maisy holding an acceptance letter in her hands from Amherst College.
“Congratulations, Maisy!”
She’d been wait-listed by Amherst in the fall and elected with a fractured heart to attend her second-choice school, UC San Francisco. Too many people in her life had gone to UC schools. Her brothers currently attended Fern’s alma mater, Davis. Half her graduating class was scheduled to attend either UCSF or San Francisco State. Maisy wanted to blaze her own path.
Fern could certainly understand that.
But why did she have to go all the way across the country? And to a school with a price tag Fern refused to think about. Now there’s no choice but to figure it out.
“I’m proud of you, girlie.” She pulls Maisy in and wraps her up. Her hair smells like coconut and mango and teen anxiety. “Sometime between now and your first day of classes, I’ll even let go of you.”
Maisy squirms. “Mom.”
“Nope. Another few seconds, please.”
“I need to text my friends.”
After dinner, Fern tells Mack the good news. “Doubly glad I optioned the book now. We’re going to need the money for Amherst.”
He hmms absentmindedly, a dad still glowing about his daughter’s success. “Speaking of, I forgot to ask. How’d it go when you told everyone you signed the deal?”
She doesn’t answer.
Mack, correctly interpreting the dead air, looks at her sternly. “Fern.”
“I know. I know.”
They finish loading the dishwasher in silence.