“Shit, Amy,” he muttered.
“So you need to know I want that. Not this weekend. Or next. No pressure. Whenever we can do it. Whenever we can fit it in. Whenever we have a day or two or five where we can do that. I just need you to know I want that. I want that with you.”
“We’ll find our time, darlin’,” he told me.
“And,” I swallowed, gathering the courage to go on, “if this keeps growing, I don’t ever want you to forget no matter how many weeks or months or years pass, all you need to do is tell me to pack a bag and I’ll do it, happy to go away with you.”
“Love that too, Amy,” he said softly and he sounded like he did. He sounded like he loved that.
And I loved that sound.
I closed my eyes. “Okay.”
“You okay?”
I opened my eyes. “I hurt for my brother,” I told him. “But I’m fine.”
“Life sucks. But if he’s getting out of a bad situation, it’s his first step to finding some happy.”
“I hope so.”
“It’ll happen. Won’t know when it will happen. But mine moved in right across the street.”
I drew in a sharp breath.
Mickey kept talking like he didn’t just gift me with something precious.
“I got work, babe. Hate it when you’re hurtin’ for your brother, but I gotta go.”
“Okay, Mickey. I’ll let you go.”
“Talk to you later.”
“Yeah. Later, honey. ’Bye.”
“’Bye, babe.”
We disconnected and I drew in another breath.
Mine moved in right across the street.
I let the breath out, smiling.
“Bonnie and Clyde!” I heard shouted in two voices.
Then I heard, “I said it first!”
“You did not!”
“Tell her, Ellen! I said it first!”
“I knew on the n. I didn’t even need the d!”
“Then you should have said it on the n!”
“Ladies—” I heard Mr. Dennison say calmingly.
“Shut it, Charles!”
At that, knowing with brief but alarming experience it was time to take action, I stopped thinking about Lawrie, Robin, Mickey and Thanksgiving and rushed to the lounge.
*
“It’s all right.”
That came from Auden.
“I think it’s the bomb. Get it, Mom.”
That came from Olympia.
We were in the back den, gathered around the PC and I was showing them the dining room table I was considering purchasing from the New Hampshire furniture company.
When they replied to my email, I found they had a small showroom but none of those pieces, although lovely, were big enough for the space I had. And the one I’d seen on their site had been purchased and was unavailable.
Mostly, however, they did custom designs and builds and the one we were viewing was a build that the people who ordered it had reneged on.
If I wanted it, it would be all mine.
“It works. It’s perfect,” Pippa went on. “And you need to get something. Uncle Lawrie is coming and Thanksgiving is just around the corner.”
I had time but my girl was right. We weren’t going to eat Thanksgiving dinner sitting on the sectional.
“Okay, I’ll get it,” I decided.
“Great. Can I stop looking at furniture now?” Auden asked.
He wasn’t in a surly mood. He was just a boy who didn’t give a fig about dining room tables.
“No,” Pippa answered for me. “We need to look at couches. And Mom, you need to get hopping on the other guest bedroom and get a pullout for in here so Hart and Mercer don’t have to share a room.”
I was looking at her, thinking she was right. I had the desk and chair but there was vast amounts of space in that room that needed filling and the whole room needed decorating.
However, when she quit talking, I reminded her, “Sweets, I explained the boys might not be coming.”
“If they have a choice between Uncle Lawrie and Aunt Frosty, they’ll so be here,” she returned.
My kids called my brother’s wife “Aunt Frosty.”
It was funny.
But it wasn’t nice.
“Aunt Frosty isn’t nice,” I rebuked gently.
She didn’t look contrite. “It isn’t but it’s real.”
I couldn’t argue that.
I still didn’t want my daughter being mean.
“Sometimes we should be careful about calling them as we see them,” I advised. “And especially when Lawr, or if the boys, come. They may be at the beginning of going through something you know from experience is unpleasant, so let’s help them do that better than we got through it, shall we?”
That was when she looked contrite, licked her lips and rolled them together.
“I care less about the guest bedroom, couches and pullouts,” Auden put in. “So now can I stop looking at furniture?”
I rolled my chair slightly back so both kids, gathered around me, moved back too.
After I did this, I said, “Actually, I need you for another little bit to talk to you about something.”
They both donned expressions of wary.
I ignored that and launched in.
“A while ago, we had a discussion about me dating.”
“Yeah, and now you’re dating some Neanderthal,” Pippa declared. “We know.”