“Mommy!”

She would know that voice anywhere, pluck it from the myriad of shouts and calls. She turned to catch the little bundle of pink and white barrelling toward her. Jessie jumped and Meg lifted her into her arms, backpack, lunch kit and all. She hugged her daughter close and buried her nose in the child’s neck, reveling in the tightness of her hug and the bubblegum scent of her hair. She gave her a quick peck on the forehead then gently lowered her to the ground and took her small gloved hand.

“So, how was your day?” Meg asked, as she always did, her smile broad and cheerful.

“Mommy, guess what?” Jessie opened her blue eyes wide, a look of wonder on her pixie face. “I saw a bunny today, a real live bunny, not the Easter Bunny.”

“A real live bunny, huh?” Meg took the lunch kit from her hand and they headed down the path toward the champagne colored Honda Accord. “That’s really cool.”

“Oh, yes.” Jessie’s voice was a soft whisper of reverence. “I got to touch him and everything. He’s so soft and cuddly. Can I get one?”

Meg chuckled and shook her head. She’d expected that. Jessie loved animals and seized every opportunity to put in her bid for a pet. Her goldfish, Sammy, was not enough. The big complaint? He wasn’t cuddly. “You know why we can’t get a pet right now, Jess. We talked about it, remember?” She opened the back door of the car and slid the Dora bag off her daughter’s back.

Jessie gave a pretty pout as she climbed into her booster seat. “I know. Pets are a lot of responsibility and I'm not old enough yet.”

“That’s right.” Meg buckled her up then tickled her, making her squirm. “But when you're old enough…”

Jessie giggled. “When I'm old enough I can get a lemur and a tiger and a bear and we'll start our own zoo.”

Meg smiled at their ongoing joke. “And when Mommy lands the biggest writing contract ever we'll add a giraffe and a pony.”

“Yay.” The little girl raised her hands in celebration and Meg laughed out loud. There was nothing like the enthusiasm of a child to lift your spirits.

That afternoon Meg and Jessie sang nursery rhymes and fun songs all the way home. Her daughter was such a bundle of joy. At five years old she was the youngest in her first grade class. The first day of elementary school had been hard for Meg, watching her baby, so tiny among the other children, leaving her to enter the building she called ‘big kids’ school’. Now that they were almost halfway through the school year it had gotten a little bit easier for her to leave her daughter.

The singing was soothing therapy for Meg. She needed it after the grueling day she’d had. Despite the cheery face she showed Jessie, inside she was in turmoil. That morning she’d done yet another job interview, this time for the position of technical writer with a law firm, but she knew the likelihood of her getting the job was slim. There had been seventeen other applicants vying for the same position, all of them placed in the same room to fill out the application form. It had been so demoralizing.

The life of a writer was not easy, particularly in an economic environment where it had become even harder to get picked up by agents and publishers. Three years earlier she’d given up her teaching career to pursue her life passion and she’d achieved some measure of success, selling seven of her contemporary romance manuscripts and making a reasonable living, enough to sustain herself and her daughter. But the past six months had been brutal. She had two manuscripts still sitting on editors’ tables and at the same time she had bills to pay. With reality staring her in the face she started putting out ads on craigslist.com and on job boards, offering her services as a ghostwriter. So far the phone hadn’t been ringing off the hook with calls from people wanting to write their memoirs or the novel of their hearts. The stupid phone hadn’t rung once since she’d posted the ads.