Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 86126 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86126 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
“Your mama teach you that?”
“Yep.”
“Your mama is pretty smart.”
“I know.”
“When I eat breakfast,” I conceded. “I like eggs and bacon.”
“That’s Nana’s favorite,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. “She likes the eggs with the yellow in the middle.”
“That’s the kind I like, too.”
“I like the mixed-up kind better,” Ariel informed me, scooting off her chair. Carefully, she grabbed her empty yogurt cup and spoon and brought them over to the garbage can.
“You like scrambled eggs?” I asked, turning to watch her as I realized what mixed-up eggs were.
“Better than the other kind,” she agreed, she stared down into the garbage. “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I dropped my spoon,” she replied, her voice wobbling. “In there.”
I was on my feet in an instant. “Hey, no big deal.”
“It’s really far down there.” Her chin started to quiver.
“Good thing I got long arms, huh?”
Noel found us at the garbage can, my arm disappearing inside it to my bicep.
“What are you doing?” she asked in confusion, looking between the two of us.
“I dropped my spoon,” Ariel replied.
“Otto took the garbage out last night, didn’t he?” I asked with a huff, gingerly grabbing the spoon. “Of course he did.”
Noel wrinkled her nose, the exact same way Ariel had done it while she was talking about eggs. I felt my lips twitch as I pulled out the spoon.
“Ah,” I muttered, lifting it out of Ariel’s reach. “I’ll put it away so only one of us has to wash our hands.”
“Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
“Uncle Otto got you breakfast?” Noel asked as Ariel went over to her.
“He got me yogurt.”
“He’s the best,” Noel said, grinning as she lifted Ariel into her arms.
The little girl’s legs dangled awkwardly around her belly.
“His brother doesn’t eat breakfast,” Ariel whispered.
“No way,” Noel whispered back.
“I told him he needs breakfast energy.”
“That’s true,” Noel said, nodding as I rinsed the spoon and put it in the dishwasher.
“He likes the same kinda eggs as Nana.”
I started washing my hands. They were still whispering.
“Good to know.”
“I didn’t tell him those kind are gross.”
“That’s good,” Noel whispered, meeting my gaze above Ariel’s head as she held back a small smile. “It’s not kind to tell people the things they like are gross.”
“Can I color?” Ariel asked. Apparently the discussion about my eating habits was over.
“Go ahead,” Noel replied, setting the little girl on her feet. “Just crayons. No markers.”
“The markers are better.”
“Crayons,” Noel repeated.
Ariel let out a huge sigh. “Okay.”
She skipped away.
Then, for the first time since she’d come back, Noel and I were alone.
Chapter 7
Noel
“You want some coffee?” Titus asked abruptly as he grabbed his cup off the table. “Shit.” He glanced down at my belly. “You can’t have coffee.”
“I can,” I clarified. “But no, thank you. It gives me a stomach ache.”
“Oh.” He looked around the kitchen. “Do you want some milk or—”
“I usually have tea,” I said, cutting him off. He was either uncomfortable or nervous and I kind of just wanted to stare at him. The boy I remembered had been confident almost to a fault. After my father had realized we were meeting in secret and locked me in the house, Titus had been the one to come looking for me. He’d been brazen that day. Not afraid of anything, even when a couple of men from our church had beat the crap out of him, and then kidnapped both of us.
The fact that Ephraim had decided to stay loyal to the church after that really should’ve clued me in to how horrendous my brother was. He’d tried to explain it away saying that there had been a few bad apples—our father being one of them—but that didn’t mean that the entire church was bad. I’d never been brave enough to remind him that the phrase was actually one bad apple spoils the barrel, as in, it makes the rest rot alongside it.
“Ariel is sweet,” Titus murmured as I opened a cupboard and pulled out the canister of tea. “Smart.”
“Thanks.” I glanced at him over my shoulder. “She’s a little big for her britches, but I like it.”
“Nothin’ wrong with a strong woman,” he grinned.
“Except when she’s talking back to her mother,” I countered with a small laugh. “But yeah, she is sweet. She has very strong ideas.”
“Mixed eggs only.”
“She likes them scrambled.”
“Yeah, she was sayin’ that.”
“Thank you,” I said, turning toward him. “For last night and coming to get us and all of it.”
“Of course.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I replied stubbornly. I’d had a lot of time to think about it and no matter which way I turned the situation around in my mind, it was a pretty big deal that Titus had come when I needed him. When we were teenagers, I’d promised that the moment I’d turned eighteen, I’d call him—and I hadn’t. I didn’t know what his life had been like in the years since I’d moved, maybe it wasn’t a big deal to him, but I’d made a promise and broken it. He could’ve hated me for it. If the roles were reversed, I wasn’t sure how I would’ve felt. Not great.