Life With A Stepmom

Hanna

 I have never been so happy to pull up to the school. Victoria and I headed off to our first class of the day.

"Hanna, what are we going to say to her today?"

"I don't know, but I couldn't take lying to her any longer. Besides, by the end of school, she'll probably know what we need to talk to her about."

"Fair enough. I'm sorry, I should have told her that we needed to talk, but I was too scared to tell her the truth."

"It's okay, it will all be taken care of today after school."

We had a couple of quizzes in our classes, but they weren't very hard. At lunch, we just ate in the school cafeteria. We both ate mashed potatoes and gravy with chicken nuggets. We decided to head to English before the bell rang. We thought that Rose would be in the teacher's lounge eating her lunch, but she was in her classroom.

"We thought you were probably still eating in the teacher's lounge."

"I've been so busy with grading that I haven't had time to go eat."

"Oh, did you want us to go get you something?"

"No, I'll be fine."

Just then, the bell rang and students began filing in. Rose seemed kind of distant in her teaching today. She seemed really frustrated. She told all of us to read our literature books silently for the whole class period. She just kept grading homework as we read the whole hour. Finally the bell rang, and I was so relieved that the time had finally arrived to come clean.

Rose spoke up, "You two go get in the car. We will talk when we get home."

No one spoke a word the whole ride home until we pulled up to the house.

Rose said, "Go into the family room. I'll be there in a few minutes."

Victoria and I went straight into the family room and sat down on the couch together. When Rose finally came in, she had a blank expression on her face as if she was waiting for us to draw her emotions.

"I'm all ears. What did you two want to talk about?"

Victoria spoke up, "I know that you already know what we want to talk about, and we can see it in your face. We're both so sorry. We would have told you sooner, but we were afraid to tell you the truth. Hanna wanted to tell you, but I spoke up before she got the chance to say anything."

"You didn't answer my question. Hanna, what did you two want to talk about?"

"We uh, um, wanted to tell you that we didn't do our homework for your class that was due yesterday. When we ended up not telling you, we thought doing some cleaning around the house might benefit our problem. I wanted to tell you yesterday before class even started, but I was too ashamed to say anything. After all that you've helped me, I didn't want to let you down again."

"Well, I'm afraid this is a bigger let down than you being honest with me about the situation."

This was the first time that Rose had started showing any emotion. She started crying, and this just hurt me even more to see.

"Rose, I don't know how to make this up to you, but I will. Tell me what I need to do."

"Me too, Mom. What Hanna said. We never meant to hurt you."

"This is going to stay between us, I'm not going to tell your dad about this."

"I don't care who knows, I just want everything to be better."

"I need you to finish the homework that was due and give it to me."

"Mom, Hanna and I already finished it. We did it last night when you told us to do our homework."

"Why didn't you do your homework when you were supposed to?"

"We forgot to do it. If we hadn't of had that stupid party, it probably would have got done."

"We would've told you during class yesterday, but we didn't want to get yelled at in front of everyone."

"Girls, just promise me something. Promise me that you will be honest about your homework from now on. The problem isn't that you didn't finish your homework. It's that you hid it from me, so I would find out on my own. What you did really hurt."

Victoria spoke up, "I promise mom. I didn't mean to hurt you. I love you."

"Rose, I promise. I'm sorry that all I've been is a disappointment. I am going to try harder to be a better student, and a better daughter. I love you mom."

That word slipped out so natural. It caught Rose's attention by surprise, and I could see that it made her happy. Tears began streaming down her face.

"I love you both. Now, go do your homework. I'll come check on you in a little while."

I know that we broke her heart, but our conversation had slowly started repairing the damage that had been made. I didn't have very much homework left, but I was stuck on a few problems. I could hear someone coming upstairs.