Finding Me

Chapter 4

"And my niece sleeps upstairs. Her room's the last door on the right," I hear my uncle say as I walk inside.

I walk inside to see my uncle standing next to a woman. I come in behind them quietly, so I can't really see what she looks like. My uncle is staring intently at her and doesn't catch sight of me. If I didn't know him so well, I'd think he was attracted to her. I finally clear my throat, causing them to both turn around. My uncle smiles at me. That's something he's never done.

"There she is now," he tells the woman.

The woman smiles at me and holds her hand out for me to shake. I step forward and give her hand a small shake.

I turn to my uncle and ask, "Who's this?"

He goes a little pink at my rudeness but manages to reply with, "This is our new housekeeper."

The woman steps in and says, "I'm sorry for not introducing myself. My name's Emma Hunt."

I give her a small smile before saying, "Nice to meet you. I wish I could stay and listen to my uncle talk about all of his boring expectations, but I have homework to do."

I glance over to see my uncle trying not to smile at my words. I see Miss Hunt's lips twitching. I smile to myself as I begin to walk up the stairs and to my room.

I walk past my full length mirror and stop. I stare at my reflection. I always hate looking at myself in the mirror. To me, there's just a fat looking girl with acne problems. Sure, I use treatments for my face, but they've never gotten rid of every single pimple. My hair is thrown up into my usual ponytail; I rarely do anything nice with it. All in all, I think it's fair to say that I don't like myself.

Knock, knock.

I snap out of my self-criticizing mode before hurrying away from the mirror and towards my bed. I quickly pull something out of the backpack. I'm jumping onto my bed when I see Miss Hunt's face peek around the corner of the door.

"Yes?" I ask.

She walks in and closes the door behind her. "You don't have to pretend that you were doing your homework. I was your age once, and I understand that you can get distracted."

Instead of being nice to her, I harshly ask, "What are you doing in here?"

Unexpectedly, she calmly explains, "I wanted to see what you wanted for dinner. I'm not sure what y'all like around here, so I thought I'd ask you."

"Our last housekeeper never asked what I wanted. She always just made something and expected me to eat it."

She laughs slightly. "Well, I'm different. What would you like to eat?"

"Chicken spaghetti," I say without hesitation.

"I see, a girl after my own heart."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"That's one of my favorite dishes. I better go get started, and you better do your homework." She turns and begins to leave.

It's not until she uses her left hand to open the door, that I see a ring on her ring finger. It's not just any ring. It sparkles in the short amount of time I see it, and I faintly see the shape of a diamond. I'm puzzled by this. If she's engaged or married, why would she be working as a housekeeper?

I ignore the nagging feeling I have and get started on my homework. Before I know it, I've finished everything I need to. I get my laptop and open it up. The first thing I see is a notification from our online high school newspaper. I roll my eyes and sigh as I go to look at the new article.