“Ash?” Nat called from behind me. “Did you find—” With Owen on her hip, she stopped short in the opened doorway, her eyes darting from him to where June lay, blinking her eyes open.
“Yeah, I found her.” With a sigh, I sat on the end of the bed and reached out to rub circles on June’s back. “Hey, bug. What’re you doin’ in here?”
“I had a bad dream.”
“How come you didn’t come get me or Nat?”
She shrugged, sitting up while she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “I’m havin’ fun with you, Uncle Asher. But when are Momma and Daddy comin’ home?”
The simple question was a wrecking ball to my chest, a knife to my gut. Facing this was something Nat and I had talked about in depth, wondering when the other shoe would drop since it’d seemed like June had taken the news so well. But still, it caught me off guard.
I glanced to Nat because I sure as hell didn’t know what to say. How did I explain death to a four-year-old? How did I define the permanence of it? That it wasn’t just a vacation. That there was no coming back.
From the look on Nat’s face—one filled with a whole lot ofoh fuck—I knew she was just as much out of her depth as I was.
I pulled June into my lap and ran a hand down her long dark hair so much like her mom’s. “You’ve been missin’ them?”
She nodded against my chest, hugging her blankie to her face as I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight.
I rested my lips on the top of her head and closed my eyes. Breathed her in and thanked God I still had this piece of my sister when I could never have her again. “Me too, bug. Me too.”
Fortunately—orunfortunately, depending on how you looked at it—four-year-olds were highly distractible creatures, and June’s attention had been diverted at the mere mention of pancakes. By her second helping, she was all smiles and laughter, but I knew it was only a short reprieve from the issue at hand. An issue I had no fucking clue how to tackle.
“If you food gremlins are done, I’m gonna hop in the shower.” Nat strode to us and dropped a plate of fresh animal pancakes—her specialty—on the table. “Whoa, easy with the syrup, you sugar fiend.”
June giggled as Nat plucked the bottle from her grip before setting it out of reach. “But it’s so yummy!”
“Good thing that puddle of it on your plate says you’ve still got plenty left,” I said before stabbing a bite of my own.
Owen smacked a palm on his high chair and snagged June’s attention, effectively ending the argument. Thank God, because I didn’t have the mental capacity to play verbal gymnastics with a four-year-old this morning.
Wrapping an arm around my shoulders from behind, Nat leaned down toward me. “We’ve got that appointment with Sheila today,” she said in my ear, though she probably didn’t need to be quite so stealthy. What, since Owen and June were now having a screaming contest, seeing who could screech the loudest. This godawful game was something they loved to do,which Nat’s and my dwindling bottle of ibuprofen could attest to.
I exhaled a heavy sigh and closed my eyes. “Shit, I forgot about that. Not exactly the best time for her to come by—when my niece was so lonely for her parents, she snuck out of her room and slept in their bed half the night.”
Nat stepped in front of me and leaned her ass back against the table. Lifting a shoulder, she said, “It might be a good thing. This is her job. Maybe she’s got a referral for someone June can talk to.”
“You don’t think that’ll look bad?” I blew out a frustrated sigh and ran a hand through my hair. “Like I can’t even keep her happy?”
“It doesn’t much matter if she looks like she’s happy if she’s really not. Does it?” Nat bent and pressed a quick kiss on my lips before standing upright, fixing her gaze on the kids, and then throwing her hat in the ring with her own scream.
The unexpected sound startled Owen and June out of their match, and the two dissolved into deep belly laughs. A smile tugged at my lips, forgetting for just a second what was at stake.
I had no idea if Nat was right. If asking for assistance would help or hurt my case. But I’d decided when Cole had played me that video of Aubrey asking me to keep the kids that I was in this to the bitter end. I was fighting to keep June and Owen. To raise them. And that meant wading waist-deep into the shit once in a while, as well as sailing through the good times. And if this wasn’t a pile of shit, I didn’t know what was.
Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang, giving Nat and I both just enough time to get ourselves presentable. I opened the door to a chorus of June and Owen’s second screaming match of the day. I’d tried to bribe them before answering, and though June had been willing to stop, Owen hadn’t been ableto be convinced. And since he continued on, June figured she deserved to as well.
“Mornin’, Ms. Cummings,” I greeted with a grin. “They’re havin’ fun, I promise.”
Just then, both kids broke off in laughter thanks to Nat sacrificing herself at their mercy and allowing them to climb on her like a jungle gym.
Sheila smiled, gripping her canvas bag once again filled with toys. “Sounds like it. Mind if I come in?”
“Sure, of course.” I stepped back and gestured her inside.
Just because this wasn’t her first visit didn’t make it any easier. I might have known more what to expect, but that didn’t change the fact that as nice as Sheila was, her job was to report to the court her thoughts on whether or not I was fit to be my niece and nephew’s guardian.
As if this all wasn’t hard enough to figure out, I was doing it with an anvil hanging over me at the same time. It felt like I was jumping out of a plane without a parachute, and I didn’t have any idea how long until I crashed into the ground.
