Paige Torn by Erynn Mangum

puzzle.”
    â€œI think I’ll have to take my chances with my macchiato.”
    â€œSuit yourself.” Peggy shrugs. “I plan on dying beautiful.”
    I laugh and stand, grabbing my jacket and purse and turning off the lamp on my desk. My desk is so bare compared to everyone else’s here. Peggy has pictures of her husband and kids and new grandbaby, Candace has pictures of her family, and Mark has pictures and a baseball that his kids signed that says, “Warld’s Bist DAd.”
    My desk has a lamp on it. And a pack of gum. And all the files I am working on. And a mock-up of the floral centerpieces for the banquet. But I am pretending it is a bouquet of flowers for me from a secret admirer. Even though I have no time for an admirer, secret or otherwise. Still. The thought of a guy sending flowers is nice.
    I wave at Peggy and climb into my car. Time to run home and change into jeans before I go to help with childcare at the church dinner tonight. I yawn, pulling out into traffic. I am tired. And really wanting to just stay on my couch eating chocolate-covered popcorn and watching Emma tonight.
    The good version with Gwyneth Paltrow.
    I hurry up the stairs to my apartment, change out my black skirt for jeans and my ballet flats for sneakers, and throw on a hoodie over my cami. I grab a cheese stick and run back down the stairs to my car.
    Cheese sticks should never be dinner as often as they are mine.
    Which sounds something like a song by Taylor Swift, but I rip open the package and inhale it on the way to church anyway.
    I get to church right at six and the dinner starts at six thirty. Geraldine, the church secretary who is in charge of the event, finds me right when I walk in.
    â€œPaige!” she says. “Oh good. Okay, I’ve got you guys set up in the nursery. I think there are only going to be six or eight kids here tonight, all ages five and younger. And Madalyn Louis is going to be helping you.”
    Madalyn is in the fifth grade and is our senior pastor’s oldest daughter. She is a sweet girl, but I’m really not sure how much help she will be when she is only eleven.
    â€œGreat,” I say, faking a genuine smile.
    â€œThanks so much for doing this, honey. I just love how willingly you serve all the time,” Geraldine says.
    I am single and live alone. Maybe this is what God has planned for these years of my life. “Sure.”
    â€œAll right. I need to go talk to someone about the music. You’re good?”
    â€œI’m good.”
    She hurries away and I walk down the hallway to the nursery. Nine kids under the age of twelve.
    And me.
    Emma is sounding better and better, but I feel horribly guilty even thinking that.
    * * * * *
    Later that night, I climb into bed exhausted. Two infants screamed the entire night, another one cried red-faced until he finally spit up in my hair and on my shirt. A two-year-old dumped animal crackers all over the floor and then stomped them into the carpet while a three-year-old girl asked nine hundred times if we could go outside and play on the playground in the pitch dark.
    And Madalyn just sat there staring at her iPod the whole time.
    After all of the parents collected their children and I mopped off my hair and shoulder, Geraldine came by to give Madalyn and me Starbucks gift cards and tell us thank you.
    â€œAnd, Paige, honey, you’ll want to spray that shirt with stain remover before you launder it. Spit-up tends to stain,” Geraldine said.
    It was a rough night. And now my car smells like spit-up too.
    I took a shower the second I got home and immediately sprayed my sweatshirt and took a small load down to the Laundromat.
    There is no better birth control than church nurseries. I am to the point that I’m not even sure I want kids anymore, ever.
    I look at my Bible and then sigh and turn off my lamp. I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I’ll read twice as much tomorrow.
    Besides,