OnePresent DayMy mother was religious in the same way that leggings are pants. By that I mean whenever times were desperate or for comfort. Never one to shy away from a passive-aggressive “bless her heart” or an exasperated “lord give me strength,” my mom mostly expressed her beliefs in empty platitudes that I often flat-out dismissed.
But she did teach me to pray. Not before bed every night, as her parents so rigidly instructed her, or at a Sunday mass, or to apologize for a laundry list of transgressions that one didn’t need to feel all that sorry for. Instead, my mother, the no-nonsense woman that she was, taught me to treat my one-way calls to the big man in the sky as more of a crisis hotline and less as a suggestion box. “God’s got enough problems,” she’d said. “Don’t waste his time with things you can handle yourself.” Or, at the very least, have the saints handle.
And so, over the course of many years, I discovered what qualified as worthy of God’s attention. Like the time my mom’s shitty Ford Mondeo broke down on the highway during a snowstorm, an hour from home without a pay phone in sight. Or, when my aunt June’s—who’s not actually my blood-relative but rather my mom’s best friend that we shared an apartment with—boyfriend started throwing shit in the adjoining room. Or when my best friend and daughter of Aunt June, Win, didn’t come home right away after swim practice one time and we’d watched a little too much
Dateline that week for comfort. Then, of course, when Mom’s doctors said there was nothing left to be done but to make the most of the time she had left. After that, we started to pray a lot.
Desperate prayer is the only kind I’ve ever known.
After Mom passed, I relied on my own instincts to tell me when it was appropriate to pull on that heavenly pair of tin cans tied together with angel’s-harp string. I’d shut my eyes tight and ask something
bigger than myself to intervene. A force of some kind. Some deity. Some all-powerful, all-knowledgeable, all-capable
thing. Something my mother called God. Something I haven’t been bold enough to name for myself just yet.
And even though I’ve never seen an answered prayer, I still find myself giving it a go. Rarely and only when there’s nothing left to be done, just as Mom taught me. Like right now, for example. Because this event, the gala that I’d decided to host in honor of my late, brilliant mother, is about to fail spectacularly. And there’s nothing I can do to fix it.
“Sarah? Are you back here?” Win, my lifelong best friend, turns the corner of the darkened hallway where I’ve hidden myself away. Her black hair is tied into a low bun, curtain bangs framing either side of her face. The squiggly horizontal lines she gets between her brows when her nose bunches up with worry are visible from here. The moment she sees me leaned against the wall, her shoulders slump and she picks up the bottom of her floor length, purple silk gown to hurry over to me at the far end of the corridor.
“You caught me,” I whine pathetically, wishing there was somewhere left inside of myself to hide.
“I did.” She looks me over, head to toe, with increasing anxiety behind her eyes. “Caleb sent me to find you. The auction is almost over.” After growing up in the same home as Win for our entire childhoods, we know each other at a level deeper than most friends would. Closer to sisters, I’d like to think. Twins maybe, given that we’re the same age. And so, because of that, I know that Win’s tone, the slight hesitancy in her voice when she said the word
auction, means that I was right to be back here praying for a miracle. We’re still nowhere near to our fundraising goal—no nearer than we were when I snuck away.
In quick succession I clear my throat, shake my head, and look up to the ceiling—all attempts at avoiding the onslaught of tears threatening to spill over. But they still come, slow and burning as they gather along my bottom eyelids. “F*** . . .” I whisper, dabbing under my eyes with the sides of my thumbs. The last thing I need is mascara running down my cheeks when I eventually make my way back out there.
“It was a beautiful evening,” Win offers gently, her mouth tilting up on one side. She reaches into her handbag, pulls out a tissue, and offers it to me.
I take it, holding it up to my water line to dab tears away. “Beautiful doesn’t exactly fund research though, does it?” I reply, snarkier than I intended before I sniff back more tears. “Sorry,” I whisper. I’m not mad at Win, I’m angry with myself.
So f***ing angry.
“No . . . I guess not.” I watch as Win hikes up her dress past her knees, and then lowers herself to sit on the floor, letting the silk material pool between her crossed legs.
I ungracefully drop to sit next to her, my knee-length forest green dress is too tight to do anything but keep my legs extended out in front of me. “I don’t want to go out there,” I say through a heavy sigh as my ass hits the ground.
Win nods slowly, looking back toward the door at the end of the hallway. “Do you want me to tell Caleb to handle it? I’m sure he could—”
“No,” I say forcefully. “No, definitely not.” The last thing I want is for my husband to come to my rescue
again. I’ve already wasted so much of our money on this event.
His money, if I’m being completely honest with myself. I can’t ask him to also step in to give the saddest goodbye address to a crowd mostly consisting of his business associates and their far-more-accomplished-than-his-own spouses. This isn’t Caleb’s failure; he shouldn’t have to own it. It’s all mine.
Isn’t that what you wanted? some malevolent part of my psyche whispers.
Something that’s only yours?“Then I don’t really see any other option here, babe.” Win pats my thigh and lowers her head onto my shoulder. “You still pulled off an incredible event and it was your very first one. I know you wanted to do it all yourself, but maybe that’s too big a task for anyone to take on. It was also a
really big fundraising goal. Maybe next time—”
I tense, straightening my posture, which forces Win to sit up, removing her head from my shoulder. The last thing I want right now is the gentlest possible version of
I told you so from the person who’s consistently cheered me on since we were in diapers.
“How much have we raised?” I ask abruptly. “When you left to find me, what was the total?”
Win clears her throat, looking at the hem of my dress, just above my knobby, freckle-covered knees. “Just under one-hundred-and-eighty thousand.”
Shitting-f***ity-f***.The goal for tonight is three hundred thousand. Between the hall rental, catering for a crowd of almost four hundred people, entertainment, auction items, décor, and advertising, the event cost just over a hundred and twenty thousand.
I automatically do the math. “Sixty grand,” I murmur, barely audible.
“That’s a
lot of money, Sar.” I don’t even think Win heard me; she can just see my obvious disappointment.
I struggle to stand in my tight dress by clawing for a grip at the wall. I begin pacing back and forth as Win’s eyes track me like I’m the ball at Wimbledon.
“Caleb and I could have saved everyone a Saturday night and donated double that amount without all of this . . .” Fanfare. Effort. Time and energy. Ego. Performance. “Bullshit,” is what I land on.
“But you raised awareness, too. Doctor Torres’s speech moved people to tears, Sar. This doesn’t just end tonight. The impact—”
“Dammit,” I whimper, grinding my high heel into the ground as I move my hands to my hips and grip tightly. “Am I some f***ing cliché? Some bored, rich housewife who has to have a cause?” I throw my hands up, then wrap them around my shoulders as I gently sway side to side. “What the f*** am I doing, Win?” I ask in soft desperation, clinging on to her eye contact like a lifeline. “I could have stayed at home and toasted to Mom with a glass of her favorite Pinot Grigio and made
more of an impact by writing a check for what this stupid event cost. What a waste of f***ing time. What a waste of money. What a
waste.”
“Sarah, you’re not being fair to yourself. You didn’t know it was going to—” She stops herself, but I hear the last, unspoken word regardless.
“Fail?” I ask, my chest falling on a wounded breath.
Win’s lips tighten, as she holds eye contact, firm yet pleading. As if to say,
Don’t make me say it.“Fail,” I repeat, raising my palms to press against my neck, cradling my jaw in both hands.
“Marcie would be so proud of you,” Win says gently. “I don’t want you doubting that for a second.”
Copyright © 2025 by Hannah Bonam-Young. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
