Perfect Girl - Weebly

Quietly, she repeats, “There is one more small thing.”
My stomach muscles involuntarily tense. “The big question
Aunt Marty is going to ask me?”
“Remember I told you we lived in an apartment above
Taylor’s?” Mom says.
“We didn’t live above Taylor’s?”
“We did.”
“Is Aunt Marty going to ask me about Taylor’s?”
“Let me talk, Ruthie,” Mom says testily.
Trying to relax my abs, I shut my mouth and let my
mother let it all out.
“Those first few years, when you were little, were really
hard,” she says. “We lived in that tiny apartment, all alone,
until your grandparents passed away.”
“Uh-huh.”
“After that, you and I moved back home.”
“Yeah.”
So far, my mother hasn’t told me anything I haven’t
heard before. I never knew my grandparents, so I wasn’t sad
when they died two months apart—one from colon cancer,
the other from a broken heart (so they say). Mr. Arthur
moved into the house a few months after we did. About the
time Perry and I first splashed around in his backyard pool.
“So, what’s the small thing, Mom?”
She inhales. “The house.”
“This house?”
“Technically, my parents left the house to Martha.”
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