“I love you, Honey.” He buried his nose in her hair. “You smell good.”
She laughed. “I’m sure I don’t. But glad you think so.” She looked up into his face. “I love you too, CT. Sorry if I was impatient, but there’s a lot to get done with Jewel and Cooper coming.”
“Coming? Here?” His brow was puzzled. “To this house?”
“Yes. Sometime this afternoon.” She stopped herself from saying “like I already told you a dozen times.” Instead, she added, “And I’ve a lot to get done before they get here.”
“I can help.”
“Yes.” She pulled fresh towels from the laundry basket, folding and stacking them next to the sink to take upstairs for her soon-to-arrive guests. Hopefully CT wouldn’t dirty them all before the girls arrived. “Maybe you could clean up the breakfast dishes. That would help.”
“Did we eat breakfast?” he asked.
“Yes.” She checked her watch. “And it’s probably time for lunch. Could you make yourself a peanut butter sandwich?”
“I can do that.” He nodded happily.
“And have some milk too?” She knew this was a risky task, but he could still handle it most of the time.
“Yes.”
“That would be helpful.” She picked up the basket of towels. “I need to take these upstairs.”
She hurried upstairs, hoping she’d just bought herself some uninterrupted time. She was just hanging towels in the bathroom when she heard CT hollering like something else was seriously wrong. She knew it was probably nothing ... and yet. With knives and fragile glassware—and had she remembered to remove the stove knobs this morning?—the kitchen could be a dangerous place. She ran downstairs, calling out that she was coming. “What is it?”
CT was staring down at the floor with a horrified expression. His favorite honeypot with a bear on the front was now a shattered, sticky mess on the kitchen’s hardwood floor. CT looked brokenhearted.
“Oh, CT.” She tried to disguise her frustration as sympathy but didn’t think it was convincing. Not to her, anyway. “It’s okay. You go get yourself some more honey while I clean this goop up.”
“More honey?” He looked confused. “From the hives?”
“No. We keep jars in the pantry. Remember?”
“Jars?” Although he was the one who filled the jars and put them there, he still seemed bewildered. He’d obviously forgotten.
“Jars of honey. In the pantry. On the back porch.” She pointed that way. “That big red cabinet. Remember?”
He nodded with a cloudy expression, like someone trying to see some faraway place.
“You go get some honey, okay?” If nothing else, it would occupy him for a few minutes while she wiped up the mess.
“Okay.”
As she dampened a dish towel, she listened to his trudging steps scuffle toward the back door. Cleaning up shards of pottery and thick honey was a slow, sticky process. She was just finishing up the worst of it when CT returned. But the floor tiles still felt tacky. It would have to wait until she mopped the whole floor ... later.
“Found ’em,” CT announced, victoriously displaying two gleaming amber jars of honey. “We got lots of honey, Honey.”
“Great.” She rinsed off her sticky hands.
“Do you know how many honeys there are?”
“Not exactly.” She dried her hands on a fresh towel, then took the jars from him. “Do you know how many?”
His smile was crooked. “A lot.”
She pointed him to the kitchen table. “Now you sit down, and I’ll fix your peanut butter and honey sandwich, okay?”
He smiled. “My Honey is a honey.”
