“Okay, seriously,whatis up with you with that, anyway?” Nami asked. “And don’t be Priming me to not ask, either. Just tell me so I stop worryin’, huh?”
Dewi glanced around and dropped her voice. “The doc wants me to gain more weight. Says the baby is fine and everything looks okay, but my metabolism has kicked into overdrive.”
Nami relaxed. “Lucky duck.”
“Pleasedon’t tell Ken and them. Or Beck,” Dewi added. “Doc said as long as I can maintain or add a little weight, he won’t rat me out to them. So I’m just running my cravings out as far as they’ll go before I start craving something else.”
Nami arched an eyebrow at her.
“I swear that’s the whole truth, Nami,” Dewi insisted, which Nami admitted amused her.
That this ferocious woman dropped into a younger sibling dynamic with her when there weren’t worse things to worry about.
Like drug cartel assholes chasing them.
Nami draped her arm around Dewi and side-hugged her. “Okay, sugar. But you know you can confide in me, right?”
“I appreciate it.” Dewi glanced around. “That’s Dania over there, right?”
Nami looked. “Yeah. The feisty one.”
handed Tamsin a ball and then ran a few yards away, turning and waiting. Tamsin smiled, tossing it to her. Imani said something to Tamsin, smiled, and started back for the house while Carl stepped in to help Tamsin lower herself to the grass in a shady spot to continue playing with the little girl.
Nami dropped her voice. “You think we can keep Tamsin alive? After her baby’s born?”
“I sure as hell hope so,” Dewi said. “I think losing her would kill Trevor and Elaine.”
* * *
There was,as Nami had anticipated, a glut of food.
It would not be a proper cookout otherwise, and running out of food would be right up there with the biggest of sins.
Which worked out in the wolves’ favor even though all of them had brought plenty of food with them. Ken had even prepared two pans of homemade mac n’ cheese that Imani had warily tasted before declaring it delicious.
For real, not for politeness. And she wasn’t Primed to like it, either.
They were all still eating and chatting, some family playing in the pool and others just sitting or standing around and talking.
Nami had finished her first plateful of food and was settled in a comfortable Adirondack chair, chatting with her sisters for a few minutes before she headed up for tastes of a few more dishes.
“All the food we got here today, I bet we bought out half the grocery stores in the county,” Nami joked.
Lu’ana shifted in her chair. “Remember that day Daddy took us grocery shopping with him?” she asked Malyah.
Malyah nodded. “God,thatwas a day, wasn’t it?”
Nami sat up, her heart racing. “I’m sorry,whatnow? What’re you talking about? I never heard anything about this!” She had zero memories of their father ever going grocery shopping, much less taking her two little sisters with him. Considering he did exactly zero to help out what little he was home, an incident like that surely would have stood out in her mind for its abnormality, if nothing else.
“You weren’t with us,” Lu’ana said. “You weren’t home that day but I don’t remember where you were. It was before Da’von was born, meaning Malyah couldn’t have been more than, what, five? That would have made me about nine. So you might have been working or studying or something. He had a wad of money in his pocket and told us not to say anything or he’d whup us. Hauled us to the grocery store with him, bought a whole bunch of stuff. Told us to get whatever we wanted. Added things to the cart he said he was buying for ‘a friend.’ Diapers, formula, things like that.”
Malyah chimed in. “Then we stopped by some woman’s house and he dropped most of it off there while he made us sit in the car. Including the baby items. We still had way more than what was on Momma’s list, though. We heard him tell the woman we were his nieces, and that our mom was working.”
“Well, that was partly the truth,” Lu’ana said, “because Momma had gone to work. I remember he’d volunteered to watch us so she could pick up an extra shift. Then he stopped and bought us ice cream. Actin’ all sugar-sweet to us by then. He reminded us to be good and not say anything. Especially not to you or Momma. Told us it would get him in trouble for being a nice guy, and we wouldn’t want to be responsible for him not getting to see us again, right?”
Lu’ana snorted in obvious disgust. “I guess when you’re little the price of silence goes down.” She shook her head. “Wonder if those diapers and formula he bought for her were for kids he had with that woman.”
Malyah nodded. “Wondered that, too, when I got older.”
