Shop and Let Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

for
dinner?”
    “ Chicken.”
    “ Sounds great. I’m
starved.” He grabbed a hard cider out of the refrigerator. “Did you
get my message?”
    “ I haven’t had time to
check messages yet. Took the girls to the museum, remember?” The
timer counted down 20 more minutes. “If you set the table, I could
run up to my office and get some work done,” I said. I could get
the report done before the oven timer dinged if Seth set the
table.
    “ In the middle of a heated
Words with Friends match?” For some reason, he always assumed I was
playing around on the computer.
    “ Bzzzt.” I said, making a
a sound to indicate just how wrong he was. Words with Friends was a
phone game, I didn’t play it on the computer. “I have to turn these
shop reports in. I’m working.”
    Two jobs at once, to be
exact, but why split hairs when your husband is happy to assume you
are on perpetual mom-vacay because you don’t do the 9-5 office
thing?
    “ Check your messages, will
you. We’re invited to dinner with the dean and his
wife.”
    “ Okay.” Dinner with the
dean? That sounded like a dress-up day. “Let me just get this one
report done. It’s short.”
    He bent down to peek in
the oven and check out the chicken. “Did you go to the job
fair?”
    “ Does driving by it
count?”
    “ I’m serious. It’s time
you got a real job.” He fished a cucumber slice out of the salad
and bit into it. “You know there’s a serial killer out there
targeting women who shop.”
    “ Have you been talking to
Anna?”
    “ You can’t deny if you had
a nice, regular office job, you’d be safe from the serial
killer.”
    “ I might be safe from the
shopper serial killer, but what about the office serial killer?
Aren’t I smarter to remain a moving target?”
    My tone was light, even
though I briefly considered what it would be like to have a “real”
job. The kids weren’t little any longer, didn’t come down with
monthly ear/nose/throat crud. I could manage it, if I gave up the
PTA, Girl Scouts, chaperoning school trips, and classroom helper
duties.
    I just didn’t want to give
those up. And I’m not sure I understood why I was so stubborn about
it any better than Seth did. All I was sure of was that flexibility
meant being able to put my kids first. No divided
loyalties.
    “ Can’t you drop by
tomorrow?”
    Right as he asked, a
message popped up on my phone. “URGENT. Easy Job Fair Shop. $15.” I
hesitated. Should I? I’d ignored that shop before, when it had been
$10, and not labeled urgent. It’s a pain to find parking on campus,
and the report had seemed complicated.
    Was it cheating to combine
mystery shopping with a visit to the job fair to make my husband
happy? “Maybe.” But my finger hovered over the Apply for Shop
button.
    He fished a baby carrot
out of the salad and waved it at me. “Molly, it’s time. Anna is in
school full-time. If you had a normal job, maybe we could afford an
extra day per week of tutoring for Ryan.”
    That was a low blow. He
knows how much I worry about Ryan’s dyslexia. I never realized how
much of life’s success depends upon being able to read until I had
a son who couldn’t. “How about this. I’ll check out the job fair,
if you go dig through his backpack tonight for the homework he’s
trying to hide.”
    “ Deal.” He popped the
carrot in his mouth. “You have to stop making everything so
complicated. Lots of women raise children and work full
time.”
    “ True. I guess it can’t
hurt to check it out.” I thought of Lawyer Mom and her live-in mom.
I accepted the job with one click. It wasn’t cheating. All’s fair
in love and work.
    I gave up on the idea of
escaping to my office before dinner. The oven timer was counting
down and Seth was not setting the table. His ‘it’s not complicated’
attitude irked me, so I aimed for his vulnerable spots. “How much
vacation time do you think I can get my first year with a new job?”
I asked as I pulled out four