Growing Up in Foster Care Taught Me Never To Trust Promises
By the time I became an adult, I had already learned how quickly people disappear.
Foster homes changed.
Social workers changed.
Promises changed.
Everything in my life fit into two trash bags, and I stopped believing anyone truly meant it when they said they cared.
So when I moved to a small town where nobody asked questions about my past, survival became simple: work, pay rent, stay invisible.
That’s how I ended up working at Joe’s Diner.
And that’s where everything unexpectedly changed.
Mrs. Rhode Was Impossible To Ignore
Mrs. Rhode was eighty-five years old, brutally honest, and completely impossible to impress.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, she marched into the diner criticizing my hair, my attitude, and my inability to smile properly.
At first, I thought she simply enjoyed making people uncomfortable.
Then one afternoon, she asked me a question that caught me completely off guard.
“Want to make some extra money helping an old woman who’s dying?”
That was her version of small talk.
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