The evidence of my situation sat waiting for me every morning on the kitchen table.
An overdue electric bill.
Another notice threatening late fees.
A coffee stain spreading across the envelope.
Beside them, a crayon drawing my daughter Lily had made of our little family standing proudly in front of a house we didn’t own.
When you’re a single father with three children and rent keeps rising faster than your paycheck, pride becomes something you can’t afford.
That was how I, Stan, thirty-five years old and constantly exhausted, ended up working for Mrs. Whitmore.
She was a wealthy widow in her seventies who lived behind iron gates and inside a mansion larger than any place I’d ever called home.
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