“You’re both my little weirdos,” I said, kissing the tops of their heads. “My beautiful, terrifying little weirdos who are going to give me gray hair before I’m thirty.”
The rest of the morning flowed into afternoon. Customers came and went, Mika and Vivi kept the coffee flowing and the pastries stocked. The twins moved from coloring to “helping” me organize books, which mostly meant Thea creating a new library classification system based on “pretty” and “boring” while Rowan arranged them by smell.
“This one smells like vanilla,” he announced, holding up a romance novel.
“That’s because Mrs. Patterson was reading it earlier, and she bathes in vanilla perfume,” I explained, gently taking it from him. “Good noticing, bloodhound.”
The knot in my stomach grew tighter with each passing hour. They were changing, developing abilities that belonged in a Marvel movie, not my life, and I had no idea what to do about it. WebMD was useless. “My child can smell colors” wasn’t exactly in their symptom checker.
The afternoon brought the usual after-school crowd, teenagers claiming tables for “homework” that involved a suspicious amount of Instagram. The twins had moved to their fort - a corner I’d set up with cushions and more books than any two four-year-olds could possibly read unless they were speed-reading prodigies. Which, at this point, wouldn’t even surprise me.
“Mama, story?” Thea asked, holding up their current favorite.
“Which one?” I asked, though I already knew. It was always the same damn book.
“The lonely wolf!” they said in unison.
Always that one. A children’s book about a wolf searching for his pack that I’d read so many times I could recite it backwards in three languages. They never tired of it. Ever. I was starting to suspect it was some form of toddler mind control.
“Maybe we should try a different story today,” I suggested. “How about the one with the dragons? Or the pirates? Or literally anything else?”
“No,” Rowan said firmly. “The wolf.”
So I read about the lonely wolf again, watching their faces light up at the same parts, their lips moving along with the familiar words. When I finished, Thea sighed contentedly.
“He finds his family,” she said. “That’s the best part.”
“Everyone needs a pack,” Rowan added solemnly.
My throat tightened. Great. Now I was getting emotional over a children’s book. “Well, you two have each other and me. And Aunty Mika, Aunty Vivi, and Grandma Sarah. Best pack ever.”
By the time we walked home, the sun was setting and both kids were dragging their feet dramatically, as if the one block journey was equivalent to climbing Everest. Our house sat just a block from the shop, a cozy two-bedroom with a big backyard perfect for running around. No stairs to worry about tumbling down, which had been my main requirement when I’d been house hunting while looking like I’d swallowed a beach ball.
“Bath time when we get home,” I said, which triggered protests worthy of Shakespeare.
“But Mama,” Thea whined, “we’re not dirty!”
“You have marker on your face and what I really hope is chocolate on your shirt. Unless you’ve taken up abstract expressionism with bodily fluids.”
“It’s chocolate,” she confirmed. “Aunt Vivi gave us cookies.”
Of course she did. My baker had the survival instincts of a lemming, sugar-loading my kids right before home time.
Bath time unfolded with its usual negotiations that would make UN peacekeepers weep. Rowan liked the water precisely two degrees cooler than Thea, because God forbid my children agree on anything. I’d just gotten them both in the tub, bubbles threatening a hostile takeover of the bathroom, when Rowan suddenly tilted his head.
“Mrs. Kelly is walking her dog,” he announced.
I laughed, squirting shampoo into my palm. “That’s nice, baby.”
“She’s saying ‘good boy, Mr. Whiskers’ over and over,” he continued, letting me wash his hair. “The dog doesn’t like it.”
“How do you know the dog doesn’t like it?” I asked, working the suds through his dark hair while mentally adding ‘pet psychic’ to his growing resume.
“He keeps pulling on the leash.”
I was about to make another joke when I heard it. The distant sound of Sarah’s neighbor passing by our house, her voice carrying on the evening air. “Good boy, Mr. Whiskers! Such a good boy!”
My hands stilled. We were in the bathroom at the back of the house. The window was closed. There was absolutely no way a four-year-old should be able to hear a conversation happening on the street before me. Unless I’d given birth to some kind of bat-child hybrid, or unless I was fucking deaf.
