Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO GAVE ME A PLACE TO SLEEP
“Which machine?”
The older woman stood with her arms crossed, waiting for an answer.
I looked toward the washing machines.
“Number six.”
She turned her head.
Machine number six was empty.
“So you're washing invisible clothes?”
I swallowed.
“Something like that.”
She studied my wet jacket, the garbage bag beside my feet, and the chocolate frosting smeared across my sleeve.
Then she looked at my face.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Birthday?”
I blinked.
“How did you know?”
“There's a candle stuck to your shoe, honey.”
I looked down.
A tiny pink birthday candle was caught in the tread of my sneaker.
For some reason, that was what finally broke me.
Not my father watching me leave.
Not Diane locking the door.
Not the homeless shelter turning me away.
A stupid little birthday candle.
I bent down to pull it off, and suddenly I couldn't see through my tears.
The woman didn't hug me.
She didn't tell me everything would be okay.
She simply walked to the front door, flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and said, “Come on.”
“My name's Lily.”
“Mine's Evelyn Kim. Everybody calls me Mrs. Kim.”
She led me toward a small office behind the dryers.
There was a desk, a refrigerator, a narrow couch, and a photograph of a smiling man wearing a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap.
“That's my husband,” she said. “Henry. Been gone nine years.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Me too. Sit down.”
She handed me a towel.
Then she opened the refrigerator and took out half a turkey sandwich.
“Eat.”
“I don't have money.”
“Did I ask?”
I stared at the sandwich.
Then I ate it so quickly I embarrassed myself.
Mrs. Kim pretended not to notice.
When I finished, she pointed at my garbage bag.
“Family trouble?”
I nodded.
“Boyfriend?”
“Stepmother.”
“Worse.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It was the first time I'd laughed since the birthday candles had been lit.
She pulled a chair across from me.
“Tell me what happened.”
So I did.
Not everything.
Just enough.
My mother dying.
My father remarrying.
The garage.
The notebook.
My birthday.
The front door.
Mrs. Kim listened without interrupting.
When I mentioned the foundation, her expression changed.
“Your mother made makeup?”
“She wanted to.”
“What's the difference?”
I took the notebook from inside my jacket.
The cover was soft from years of handling.
Mom had written one word across the front in beautiful blue letters.
LUXE.
“She never finished it,” I explained.
“She died before she could make it work.”
Mrs. Kim held out her hand.
“May I?”
I hesitated.
Nobody had ever asked permission to touch Mom's notebook.
Diane called it junk.
Dad called it an obsession.
But Mrs. Kim waited.
Finally, I handed it over.
She flipped through several pages.
There were ingredient lists, sketches, pigment measurements, and little handwritten reminders.
On one page, Mom had drawn a tiny heart beside the words:
For Lily, when she's ready.
Mrs. Kim stopped there.
“Your mother believed you'd finish it?”
“She believed I could do anything.”
“And you believed her?”
I looked away.
“I used to.”
Mrs. Kim closed the notebook.
“Then you've got something to work on.”
She pushed it back toward me.
I shook my head.
“I don't even have somewhere to sleep.”
She glanced toward the couch.
“Tonight you do.”
I opened my mouth.
She raised one finger.
“One night. Tomorrow we figure out something more permanent.”
I started crying again.
Mrs. Kim handed me another towel.
“Good grief, girl. I'm going to run out of these.”
That night, I slept beneath a faded blue blanket with my mother's notebook tucked beneath my pillow.
At six the next morning, Mrs. Kim woke me with coffee and an offer.
Her laundry attendant had quit three days earlier.
She needed somebody to clean machines, fold customer laundry, and work the overnight shift.
The pay wasn't much.
But there was an unused room above the shop.
It had once been her husband's office.
“Bathroom's down the hall,” she said. “Kitchen's downstairs. Roof leaks when it rains sideways.”
I stared at her.
“You're offering me a job?”
“I'm offering you work. The room comes with it.”
“I don't know anything about laundry.”
“Neither did Henry when we bought this place.”
I whispered, “Why would you trust me?”
Mrs. Kim looked at the black garbage bag beside the couch.
“Because somebody should.”
I stayed.
That first month, I worked at the diner from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon.
Then I worked at the laundromat from five until midnight.
Between shifts, I experimented with my mother's formulas using whatever small amounts I could afford.
Mrs. Kim gave me a corner of the storage room.
She insisted I keep everything away from laundry chemicals and customers.
I saved for proper equipment, kept detailed records, and found a local cosmetic science instructor willing to answer my questions.
By December, I had made seventeen unsuccessful versions of Luxe.
Some turned orange.
Some separated.
One looked perfect for thirty seconds before becoming a strange shade of purple.
Mrs. Kim called that one “haunted gravy.”
But version eighteen was different.
It came out pale.
Then, as I blended it across my wrist, the pigment capsules released color.
Not perfectly.
But close.
Closer than anything I'd ever made.
I ran downstairs holding my sample.
“Mrs. Kim!”
She was folding towels.
“What happened? Fire?”
“Look!”
I rubbed a tiny amount across the back of her hand.
She watched the color change.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she turned her hand beneath the fluorescent lights.
“Well,” she said quietly.
“That's interesting.”
I laughed.
“Interesting?”
“Don't get greedy. You haven't sold anything yet.”
But she was smiling.
Two weeks later, Brooke visited.
She arrived carrying a shoebox.
“I couldn't get your laptop,” she said immediately. “Mom changed the password on Dad's office computer.”
I hugged her.
“You shouldn't be sneaking around.”
“I know.”
She placed the shoebox on my bed.
Inside were three photographs of my mother, her silver bracelet, and a small bottle wrapped in tissue paper.
My breath caught.
The bottle was old.
Its label had faded.
But I recognized my mother's handwriting.
LUXE — SAMPLE 04.
“Where did you find this?”
“In the garage. Mom wanted to throw it away.”
I carefully lifted the bottle.
There was something taped to the bottom.
A yellowed piece of paper.
I peeled it loose.
It was a receipt from a company called Meridian Beauty Research.
Dated eight months before my mother died.
Across the bottom was a signature.
Not my mother's.
My father's.
RICHARD HART.
And beside it, in red ink, were four words:
EXCLUSIVE FORMULA TRANSFER — COMPLETED.
I stared at the paper.
My father had always told me he didn't understand my mother's experiments.
But eight months before she died, he had signed something involving her formula.
Something he had never mentioned.
Brooke touched my shoulder.
“Lily?”
I turned the receipt over.
On the back, written in my mother's handwriting, was one sentence.
If Richard tells Lily I gave up Luxe, show her the blue folder.
May you like
And underneath it:
He knows what happened to the original.
