“Coby, don’t jump on the table, dear.” My mother’s voice follows in the hallway. “And where’s my baby boy?”
Simone eyes the back door, handing me a plate of scones. “Save yourself,” she whispers, straightening her apron and heading into the chaos. “Grant. No, please don’t lick the floor.”
Yeah. Getting out of here for a few minutes sounds like the right move.
I open the back door, only to die of a heart attack right there on the spot. Nothing matters now. Those damn two lifeless eyes stare, unblinking, at me on the porch.
So maybe inside is better —
“Amy—Grant’s wiggled his way to the top of the bookshelf, and he’s too heavy for me now,” Simone says, exhaustion clear in her voice. “Coby, love, you can’t sit on the cat. Amy?”
“Boys, listen to your Auntie Simone and be good, okay?” Amy says in the sweetest, most non-threatening way.
Or outside, outside works too.
“Maa.”
“The fuck!” I recoil, turning and facing Gio again. Staring. Hexing.
“Language, half-pint!” Simone calls from the other room.
Only forty-three more days until this suspension ends, and this hellscape of domesticity is over.
ChapterEleven
Aulie Desfleurs
Play:Needles and Pins by the Searchers
“So, what do you think?”
I blink through the layer of film coating my eyes and refocus on my co-planner, Bridget Funk.
Did she—did she finish her lecture?
I’ve perfected falling asleep with my eyes open during Bridget’s diatribes. Today, she honored me with a long-winded dissertation on the umbrella scene inPersuasion.People seem to have forgotten the cultural significance of Captain Wentworth offering Anne Elliot an umbrella. I’m not entirely clear why, since before traveling to dreamland, my mind took a detour to the Land of Panic and Chaos.
There, a festival ofOh no, Jack is Playing Wickham, and I’m Going to Have to Deal with the Forced Proximity Situationis in full swing.
You’re Going to Have to Flirt and Touch Him While Being a Silly Little Thingis the main attraction, with flashing neon lights, and a small version of Whack-A-Mole featuring Emy’s adorable-but-meddling face.
I blink again.
Bridget peers at me beneath her thick black bifocals, which make her look a good forty years older than me, rather than the four, and brings her cup of tea to her lips, patiently waiting for me to respond. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. It blew my mind too.”
Yeah, that’s not the problem here. I wipe at my mouth, collecting the drool that formed at one corner of my lips as I dozed. Luckily, no one in Cup of Joe’s is paying attention to us.
“About the umbrella?” I finally manage, dusting cobwebs off my vocal cords.
At this point, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be responding to. She went on for fifteen minutes, and I caught about five of it. Bless Charlotte Lucas’ plain heart and all of Bridget’s students if her classes are that dry.
“Mmhmm.”
Tapping my pen on my notepad in front of me, the mountain of materials we still need to address taunts me.
Twenty.
Twenty items we need to discuss immediately forPride and Prejudiceweekend. And we somehow just wasted fifteen minutes on an umbrella fromPersuasionfive weeks before its weekend at the fair.
