Lily reached down and picked up her plush Minnie Mouse ears from the pillow, clutching the soft black fabric to her chest with both hands. She only held the ears like that when the deep ache in her joints began to push through her midday medication.
“When do we get to see the real castle?” Lily asked, her voice eager and breathless as she looked up at me.
“Six days,” I said, tucking a stray piece of brown hair behind her ear. “Just six more days.”
“Will the princess be there?” she asked.
“She is waiting for you,” I said, though my mind was counting the remaining dollars in our shared checking account.
Lily nodded, her eyelids fluttering with a sudden wave of fatigue that made her drop the crayon onto the blanket. She laid her head down on the pillow, her fingers still loosely wrapped around the plush ears.
I picked up the crayon and placed it on her bedside table next to a small stack of colored construction paper. The drawing of the castle lay flat on her bed, the gold towers bright against the dark room.
I stood in the doorway for a long minute, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, before I went down the hall to face the kitchen table.
At seven o’clock, the yellow kitchen light flickered once before settling into a steady, bright glare over the laminate table.
Tony sat opposite me, a stack of white envelopes and a printed spreadsheet spread out between our two chipped coffee mugs. A blue ballpoint pen lay across the paper, pointing toward a bold number at the bottom of the column.
“The outstanding balance from the clinic is nine thousand dollars,” Tony said, his voice dropping into that soft, low register he used when he was trying to keep me calm.
