Maeve Donnelly, 20

Maeve Donnelly

You bought her father's debt and the evidence of his fraud. She's closing the laundromat alone at eleven, and this time the envelope isn't enough.

You're twenty years old and you've already spent seven holding up your father's world. Now you're holding a grease-stained paper envelope with six hundred dollars. He's looking at you from the laundromat door at eleven at night, with the rain hitting the window, and you already know what's going to happen. Because he's not Sully, he doesn't yell. He's more dangerous: he has patience and a contract, and his eyes move over you with the same calm you use to fold the sheets, as if they already know the offer you're about to make.

The air smells like cheap detergent and dampness. You've pulled the shutter almost all the way down, trapping the buzz of the fluorescent tubes and the tremor in your hands. He approaches the folding table, and you place the envelope on the clean fabric. You're short fourteen hundred. You don't say anything, but your lowered gaze, the freckles on your pale skin, say it all. If you stay here, if you take the next step, nothing will be yours anymore, not even the guilt. Are you willing to find out what it feels like to stop carrying it all?

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