Paper Cuts Read Online Free

still really young. The only photo we have of him shows him holding Grace the day she was born. He was about eighteen years old, and to me he looks terrified, bewildered, and maybe a little awed. I guess having a baby can do that to you.
    No wonder Grace’s edge has softened. To others the change might be imperceptible, but the very fact that she now likes my friend Izzy – someone she formerly considered lame – is a giveaway. She continues to assume people are idiots until she’s proven wrong, but she’ll backtrack if someone is nice to Keira.
    ‘The room looks good,’ Grace calls from the bedroom.
    Mom recently redecorated it as a birthday present to me. She’s a whiz with a staple gun and paint, and I’ve always been comfortable having my friends over, even though their homes are far nicer.
    Coming to the doorway I see that Grace is already unpacking the first of three suitcases. My bed is strewn with Keira’s toys.
    ‘Did you bring everything you own?’ I ask.
    ‘I wish I could take all the furniture too. Paz should have to sleep on the floor.’
    Grace shows up here after every fight, and moves out just as abruptly. It’s a revolving door, but Mom never complains. Although she was upset when Grace got pregnant, Mom became really supportive after Keira was born. I guess that’s because Mom never had much support herself when she was in the same predicament. Her parents disowned her, so we ended up living in my dad’s parents’ basement. Then Dad took off on us and moved to New Mexico to start another family that doesn’t terrify him.
    ‘You’ll be back with Paz by the weekend,’ I say. If there’s a God.
    Grace shakes her head. ‘Not this time.’
    She throws clothes into drawers any which way, and when she thinks I’ve stopped watching her, she wipes her eyes with her sleeve.
    Okay, this is serious. As far as I know, Grace didn’t even cry when she realized she was pregnant. I feel sorry for her, but I know that any display of sympathy will send her into a blind rage. Better to tiptoe around this grenade. ‘What did he do?’
    It can’t be another woman, or Grace would be in jail by now for shooting one – or both – of them. She has always been fiercely jealous of Paz, who is really cute and too flirtatious for his own good. I never got the sense that he’d cheat on her, though, because he says Grace is the best thing that ever happened to him. The more outrageous she gets, the more amusing he finds her. He had ‘Grace’ tattooed on the inside of his right wrist and ‘Forever’ inside the left.
    She piles my stuff on the floor as an excuse not to look at me. ‘Nothing,’ she mutters to herself.
    ‘I understand if you don’t want to talk about it,’ I say, sensing she does.
    ‘He just doesn’t want to be a family, that’s all.’
    I sit down on my bed to face her. ‘Did he say that?’
    ‘He didn’t have to.’
    Famous last words in any relationship. I know that even though I haven’t had one. ‘What makes you think so?’
    ‘He hardly spends time with us anymore. When his shift is over, he hangs out with the guys for hours. And when he does look after Keira, he just sticks her in front of the TV and ignores her. He doesn’t even read to her. These are the critical years when her brain is developing really fast. The book says—’ She stops abruptly.
    ‘What book?’
    ‘Just a book about child development. Never mind.’ She stands and opens another suitcase. ‘He doesn’t care, that’s all.’
    ‘Paz loves Keira,’ I say. I believe it, too. He carries her picture around and shows it off to everyone. But he’s a bit selfish and lazy, traits Grace could have easily seen before she moved in with him. Mom and I did.
    ‘I know he does.’ Her resigned tone worries me more than anything else. It isn’t like Grace to give up a fight. ‘And I’ll make sure he gets to see her. But I had to take a stand, Lu. I will not be anyone’s doormat. I have to set an example