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)
“I could eat,” I replied, laughing when her gaze shot to mine.
“You’re so funny,” she replied dryly, taking the toddler from me.
Noel’s eyes were red rimmed and her skin was blotchy around her cheeks, but I kept my mouth shut. If she’d wanted to talk to me about it, she wouldn’t have gone upstairs to cry and then come back down dry eyed pretending that it hadn’t happened.
I was setting the table when a knock at the front door had Noel spinning to look at me.
“Probably my mom,” I reminded her.
My mom didn’t do anything quietly and it would’ve been too much to ask her to pick the bag up from the porch when she had a grandkid inside that she hadn’t seen in almost twenty-four hours.
“Hey, son,” she greeted, grinning huge. “Just here for the bag.”
“Uh-huh,” I murmured, waving her inside.
“Gran!” Flora yelled, running hell-bent for leather toward us.
“My girl!” Mom called back. “Are you having fun with Uncle Titus?”
“He keeps sayin’ bad words,” Flora said, an evil smile on her little face. “And Ariel points it out every time.”
“Oh, man,” my mom said consolingly. She glanced at me. “He better clean up his act.”
“My act is just fine,” I replied dryly, punching in the alarm code to arm it again. “Flower’s a snitch.”
“Snitches get stitches,” Flora sang.
“Do not let your mother hear you say that,” my mom said with a snicker, carrying her toward the kitchen. “Something smells good!”
“Hey Heather,” Noel greeted, dishing up the kids’ plates. Ariel had already parked herself at the table. I glanced over to see her watching my mom.
“Hey, doll,” my mom greeted, putting Flora down. “What the heck did you make?”
“Pork chops, gravy, broccoli and rice,” Noel answered as my mom rounded the kitchen table. “You hungry? We have plenty.”
“Sure!”
Mom wasn’t even looking at Ariel as she nonchalantly walked up behind her and snatched her out of her seat, making the little girl squeal.
“You didn’t even come to say hello?” Mom teased with mock offense, tickling her. “What, am I old news now?”
“You’re not old news,” Ariel yelled, squirming with laughter.
“Oh good,” my mom said calmly, her tickling paused. “I expect you to come running if I show up. It keeps me young.”
“Because that’s not creepy at all,” I said to Noel, making her giggle. Then louder, “You gonna build a house made outta candy next? Lure all the little children into your oven?”
“Shut it,” my mom ordered, not bothering to look at me as she set Ariel back in her seat.
“So, uh,” I looked at Ariel and then back to Noel.
“Out with it,” she said, sliding her eyes toward me while she stirred the shit in the crockpot.
“I may have said some swear words in front of the girls.”
“May have?”
“Did,” I confessed. “Absolutely did.”
“Okay.”
“Seriously? That’s it? Ariel gave me more shit than that.”
Noel snickered. “Did she tell you when you’d said a bad word?”
“Every time,” I whispered, throwing my hands up.
“We finally had to tell her not to point out every time Otto swore,” Noel replied. “It was getting tedious.”
“How did you get her to stop?”
“Um,” she looked at me in confusion. “We told her to stop.”
“Well, that’s easier than working out a signal,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
We watched as my mom chatted with the girls, asking them about how their day had gone and listening to their impressions of me when Flora had decided I needed to get a little closer to their mean-as-fuck chicken.
“No, it was more like HYEE,” Flora said, making a weird honking noise.
Ariel and Flora both made the noise, too, making my mom’s entire body shake with laughter.
“Hey, you weren’t even there,” I scolded Diana jokingly.
“I there!” she scowled.
“She wasn’t,” I reminded Noel, who was watching the antics with an amused smile.
I didn’t even mind that the little girls were making me sound like the biggest coward on the planet after catching a glimpse of that smile. The hollow look was finally gone from her eyes as the rice cooker dinged and she started plating the girls’ food.
“You want me to bring these to the kids?” I asked, lifting the little plates so I could blow on them to cool them off.
“Yeah, the big girls.” She nodded. “I need to cut Diana’s smaller.”
“Good call,” I murmured. I was pretty sure I’d lost a few years off my life when I’d seen her choking at my parents’ house.
“Isn’t this cozy,” my mom teased, moving around me as I brought the plates to the table.
“Don’t start,” I ordered.
“You two make a good team,” my mom practically sang.
We sat down to dinner and thankfully my mom kept her crazy to a minimum. With each moment that passed, Noel grew more and more tense. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from checking the clock on the stove over and over. She was so focused trying not to look, that she didn’t even notice that I was watching her.