Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
She took a breath.
“Is Doug angry?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s feeding this, you feeling like your kid is putting him out.”
She nodded. “He wants his mancave back.”
“Yeah, well, tell him to suck it up. That’s what you do for family.”
“I’m just tired of fighting with him about it.”
“Well, maybe your folks would like to have them at their place.”
“No, they’ve got Michael back. Didn’t you hear?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“Yeah, last week.”
“And Mitch?”
Another heavy sigh from her. “My ex-husband just had a new baby with his third wife.”
“Holy shit,” I said, chuckling. “He’s got a whole baseball team of kids now, Jen.”
She cracked a smile for me.
“And he just turned fifty-five or something, didn’t he?”
That was it, she started laughing, and I saw the Jen I had first given tea to in Sam’s apartment all those years ago.
“I’ll have Sam call and invite Doug shooting. That should help.”
She wiped her eyes. “He would love that, thank you.”
I hugged her then, and stayed and talked until after she announced that the food was ready and everyone should come and get it. No more than fifteen minutes later, there was a general announcement that one of the kids was missing. Sam and I were sitting with several other couples; it was normal, everyone wanted to chat up the chief deputy of the Northern District of Illinois, and he was just about to call in reinforcements when they found the little girl. She’d been playing hide-and-seek, and the four-year-old had climbed into Jen’s dryer. She hadn’t closed the door, couldn’t, but still, the idea of someone bumping it shut was horrifying, and I was shaken.
Leaning close, Sam put his hand on the back of my neck and rubbed gently, trying to ease the dread out of me. We, like most parents with small children, had been vigilant. Sam’s family, especially his mother, sisters, and aunts, had judged us, overly so. But the fact was, I’d never lost one of my kids while I was on watch. Had they been taken? Yes. Hannah had the same issues I did in terms of, on occasion, she got into trouble. But the fact of the matter was, when my kids were little, up until they were both over the age of twelve, they had not been able to shake me. Sam had told me too many horror stories about parents who were distracted for moments and never saw their kids again. One of his pet peeves was parents who walked in front of their kids across parking lots, through parks, or through crowds. How could you see where your kids were if you were leading and not holding hands? He’d had a million rules for when we went out in public, and one of them was never to turn and be waiting, wondering why your kid wasn’t right behind you.
I shivered hard.
He leaned in close, whispering in my ear, “You ruined a lot of fun when Kola and Hannah were little, J. You were a giant buzzkill.”
“Yes.” I sighed. “I was, wasn’t I.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, chuckling, his warm breath on the side of my neck. “It was always the same. You’d ask them, ‘Have you lost your mind?’”
I took a quick breath. Sam always knew the right thing to say.
Kissing my temple, he leaned back and wondered aloud where my kids were.
Turning, I pointed out Hannah and Jake sitting with Regina, and Kola, who I thought was sitting with Thomas, was crossing the yard to us. He was carrying a folding chair, which, interestingly, he wedged between me and Sam’s cousin Levi, adding the ninth chair to a table that comfortably seated eight.
“Where’s your plate?” I asked him, because my son could eat from dawn to dusk and never be full. As far as I could tell, everything he took in went to muscle. And while he was leaner, rangy where Sam had hard, heavy muscle, he was built more like my brother, like a swimmer, and everyone was suddenly noticing. In the past year Kola had gone from being handsome to simply stunning. I knew I was biased, as every parent was, but between the jet-black mane that hit his broad shoulders to his dark blue eyes, chiseled features and square jaw, I watched people notice my son on a daily basis. At the moment, though, with his sunglasses on, hunched in the chair, it almost seemed like he didn’t want anyone to see him at all.
He wasn’t answering me either.
“Hello,” I greeted my son again, bumping his knee with mine. “Food?”
But he was on his phone, AirPods in his ears, watching TikTok.
“He’s not hungry?” Sam questioned me. “Him?”
It was odd.
Looking up, I saw Hannah and Jake in line for food, and texted her to bring her brother a plate. She glanced around until me waving caught her eye, and I pointed down at my oldest. I got the thumbs-up and elbowed my son gently to get his attention.