Am I still gawking?
I am.
I am still gawking.
Being quite the prat.
“The clock!” both boys shriek at the same time.
“It’s five-forty,” Charlie says.
“It’s eight-twenty-five,” Eddie replies.
They stare at each other.
I make a mental note to have remedial clock training for Charlie.
“You could try both,” Bea muses.
My children, the two boys who laughed with me until all of our cheeks hurt yesterday over our attempts at knitting to prepare for this weekend’s adventures in Athena’s Rest, knock their heads together with a distinctcrackas they both dive toward the keypad again.
“Owwww,” Charlie howls.
“Bloody freaking hell, that hurts,” Eddie groans.
I don’t even realize Bea and I have moved as one until she’s squatting before Charlie, enabling me to direct my full attention to Eddie.
“You okay?” she says to him, touching him lightly on the red mark on his forehead.
“How badly does it hurt?” I ask Eddie, doing the same for him.
Both boys insist they’re fine.
“I can shake it off,” Charlie says to Bea. “I’m tough.”
She smiles at him. “Clearly.”
I, however, am not tough.
I am a bloody marshmallow being slow-roasted over a comfortable fire.
Or perhaps that’s merely my heart.
Melting on the inside.
Have I—have I fallen in love with Bea?
It’s the question humming through my mind as the boys work out the next three clues, until they’ve become stumped as we all four squat before a vault behind a hidden door.
“The gold is in there,” Charlie’s insisting. “That’s what the clue says. That we have to crack the secret code for the vault if we want to have our riches before we depart.”
Bea’s sweeping her fingers over the edges of the door. “Maybe there’s a hidden combination lock that’s not on the vault?”
“That doesn’t make any bloody sense,” Eddie grouses.
“Agreed, but there’s not a combination lock on the vault either.”
“There’s a keyhole,” I point out.
