God bless my niece. She might be a handful and not know when to keep quiet, but she had taken the little boy under her tiny wing and the two of them were as thick as thieves.
“No. These are a bunch of my friends that all want to meet you. There might be a little girl named Remy there, but she’s pretty young, so I’m not sure she’ll know how to play with you.”
Rome and Cora’s daughter was the spitting image of her pixielike mother and a tiny tornado of activity.
“I’ll take my trucks just in case.” He got to his feet and held the plastic toys out to me.
“Sounds like a plan. Don’t forget to grab your hat and gloves.” Denver had nose-dived into early winter, and even though there wasn’t snow on the ground yet, the temperatures were hitting below freezing on the regular. I was regretting every single time I ever gave my mother hell for trying to make me dress warm when I was a kid as Hyde grumbled all the way to his room. Little boys apparently hated being warm and it was an ongoing struggle to keep my little guy bundled up.
I put on my own coat and shoved the trucks into the pockets. I grabbed the keys to the Jeep and waited for Hyde to come barreling out of his room. He had his knit hat on and one glove and a puzzled look on his face.
“I only have one.” He held up his bare hand for inspection as I lifted an eyebrow at him.
“Where did the other one go?”
He shrugged his tiny shoulders and shuffled his feet in the black Converses that matched my own.
“I dunno. I lost it.”
I sighed and pulled the glove off his other hand. I was going to have to start buying those suckers in bulk. “You think you might’ve left it over at Grandma’s?”
More shrugging. “Maybe. Are you mad at me?” His bottom lip trembled when he asked it.
I took his uncovered hand in my own and left the condo. “No, I’m not mad at you. I lost my fair share of gloves when I was your age. I just want you to be warm, remember? It’s my job to take care of you.”
I made sure to keep my steps short and easy for his much smaller legs to keep up with. “I’ll try harder.”
I grinned down at him. “Thanks, buddy.”
“Hey, Zeb.” I stopped and hefted him up so I could put him in the Jeep. When we were eye-to-eye he asked me, “If your friends are going to be there, is Sayer going to be there? I miss her.” Now that he was with me full-time she no longer stopped by to see him after work. I wanted to call her on it, tell her she was making the wrong choices all around, but I knew she had to figure out where she was going on her own. I continued to have hope but the past was still pulling at her hard and I couldn’t do anything more until she worked her way free.
It was a gut punch.
I gave Hyde a little squeeze and worked him into his seat. “I don’t know. She might be and I miss her, too.”
“Call her. You said I could, so why can’t you?” Again, five-year-old logic at its finest.
“Well, bud, I think she would want to talk to you if you called; me . . . not so much. It’s complicated adult stuff that you don’t need to worry about, okay?”
He didn’t bring her up a lot but every time he did it was heart-wrenching. He was too young to have lost so much. He nodded and gazed up at me through his lashes. “Okay, Zeb.”
I shut the door and walked around the Jeep to get in the driver’s side. We were both quiet as I drove toward the suburbs where Asa had bought his new house. I knew Hyde was thinking because his feet were bouncing up and down and he was biting on his lower lip. I could read the kid like a book now and knew he was going to hit me with more questions I probably didn’t have the right answers for. I tried to be honest with him. I tried to be as forthright and as compassionate as I could be, but life wasn’t fair sometimes and there wasn’t always a happy ending. I just hated to tell him that his mother fell into that category.
“Hey, Zeb?”
I looked over at him. “Yeah, buddy?”
“How come you’re better at taking care of me than my mom was?” It was an innocent question but not innocent at all.