Alec shook his head slowly, sadly. “My dad says he has ta work.”
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “Well, you tell him I can take you two. You tell him to come over here just as soon as he gets a chance, and we’ll get it worked out.”
He gave her an “are you serious?” look, and she nodded in affirmation. “Go on! Go tell him!” She prompted him toward his house with her hands.
She turned back to find John watching her, his face telling her all she needed to know. “What did Oliver Twist want now?” he asked. John pretended to be gruff, but he was an old softie.
“Be nice,” she chided. She set his parfait down in front of him.
He raised his eyebrows. “Did you just offer to tote those kids to the pool today?”
She shrugged. “They wouldn’t have gotten to go otherwise. Lord knows Lance doesn’t have the time to take them.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, gave her an impervious look. “You better watch out, or they’re going to suck you right in.”
She waved his words away. “Oh, they are not. Eat your parfait.”
“I like my parfaits to involve pudding,” he groused, but he began to eat.
After a few minutes of silence, John took a drink of his coffee and said, “So I was talking to Clay Robinson. Seems they’re in the same boat as us. Kids gone, nothing planned for the summer . . .” She looked over at him, feeling where the conversation was going but not liking it. He ignored her panicked look and continued. “We talked about maybe going on a little couples’ getaway.”
Zell didn’t want to go on a couples’ getaway. She wanted to go on a family vacation like they used to—rent a house on the beach or a cabin in the mountains by a stream, or stay in a hotel near an amusement park. She wanted to pick up wet towels and soothe sunburned skin and sweep up sand. She wanted to go fishing and camping and ride roller coasters and make s’mores and play board games. She wanted the summers of the past. She wanted to do it all again.
But she could not say that to John, who still loved her, still wanted her, still held her hand when they drove somewhere in the car. This was, she knew, something. She lowered her hands to his forearms. He had such strong forearms; even now she admired the way the muscles rippled underneath his skin. “What did you have in mind?” she asked.
“I was thinking Lake Lure?” he asked. “Somewhere quiet and peaceful like that? Maybe a little cabin by the lake.” He grinned, proud of himself for thinking up this plan. “With a screened-in porch.” She was a sucker for a screened-in porch, and he knew it. They’d been talking about adding one to the house for years, but with three kids to get through college, the cost had been prohibitive. Maybe now they could do it.
“Clay and I could golf. You and Althea could poke around in the shops.” Clay and John had been work buddies for a long time. She tolerated Althea, but she would never elect to vacation with her. The woman had the most alarming breasts. They looked like when her son stuck water balloons down his shirt to be funny; they hung absurdly low and moved independently from the rest of her. Althea also thought her only son looked exactly like Tom Cruise and used every opportunity to whip out her photos of him. This also disturbed Zell; she’d stood by once too often as Althea accosted some poor soul with photos while they nodded and agreed politely.
“That sounds nice. I’ll give Althea a call about it as soon as I get a chance,” she said agreeably. She’d think of a way out of it later.
Satisfied, John put down his coffee. “You know, I don’t have to get to work right away,” he said.
She laughed. “I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.”
“It’s not your teeth I’m interested in.” He flashed his most charming smile, rose from his chair, and carried his dishes to the sink. He turned back and raised his eyebrows in invitation. She giggled and waved him away. He shrugged, then shuffled off to shower and get ready for his day.
She went to the sink and busied herself with washing the coffee mugs and dishes from breakfast, half thinking of going upstairs to join John in the shower. Wasn’t this the kind of freedom they once dreamed of having? Outside the window over the sink, something caught her eye, distracting her from her thoughts. A blue Mylar balloon shaped like a heart floated on the breeze, carried down their street as if an invisible child’s hand were tugging it along. She stopped washing dishes and watched as it floated away.
BRYTE
The moment her eyes opened, she went into planning mode, listing the responsibilities of the day ahead. Opening weekend at the pool meant making sure the bags were packed, the lunches made, the meeting time confirmed with friends, the ample supply of sunscreen readily on hand. She lay in her bed going over it all, ticking off the mental bullet points.
In the next room she could hear Everett talking with Christopher about dinosaurs, going over the different kinds again, answering the same questions he’d answered dozens of times before. Christopher couldn’t wrap his tongue around all the syllables in the long dinosaur names yet, and his mispronunciations were legendary. She could hear Ev laughing over Christopher’s butchering of the word velociraptor. Then she heard the unmistakable screech of his impression of one. The sound of the two of them pulled her from the cocoon of her bed, pushed her toward her son and her husband, the nucleus of their family, her very center.
“Mommy’s up!” Everett told Christopher. He gave her a grin over the top of the little boy’s head. Their hair was the exact same shade of brown, their eyes, though shaped differently, almost an identical blue. My boys, she thought, and her heart contracted with love.
“Tell Mommy where we went this morning while she was sleeping,” Ev prompted.
Christopher thought about it, his eyes lighting up when he seized on the right answer. “Krispy Kreme!” From him it sounded like “Kwispy Kweme.”
“And what kind of donut did you pick out for Mommy?” Everett coached.
“Chocolate with sprinkles!”
Bryte laughed along with Everett. She knew that “her” donut would be quickly devoured by a certain almost-three-year-old boy with laughing eyes and a love for dinosaurs. She scooped him up and pressed him to her, inhaling his early-morning smell the same as she had done since he was born. He was her precious, long-awaited baby, the child she’d feared they might never have.
“Hey, buddy,” she said. “What letter do donut and dinosaur start with?”
Christopher scrunched up his face, thinking hard. He was so smart, already linking sounds to letters, recognizing their distinct shapes. Behind them, Everett whispered, sotto voce, “D.” Bryte swatted at him as Christopher shouted out the answer as if he’d thought of it on his own.
“D!” he crowed, then laughed, looking around in victory as his parents joined in with him.
“I told everyone we’d meet them up at the pool around eleven,” Bryte said to Everett. “That’ll give us a few hours before n-a-p time. But one of us will need to go over and walk Rigby before we go.”
Everett nodded in agreement and motioned her into the kitchen, where a donut and freshly made coffee with cream awaited her. He’d made a big deal on Mother’s Day just a few weeks before, and Christopher had latched on to the concept of fussing over Mommy’s breakfasts ever since. She wasn’t complaining. But the thought of eating the sugary-sweet donut nauseated her.