“I appreciate that.” I pointed to the near-empty plate of food with my fork. “Best breakfast I’ve ever had, Maisie. Seriously, thank you.”
“I highly doubt that. Your mom’s a phenomenal cook.”
“Yeah, but breakfast was always cereal. Dad was the one who did big breakfast.” I focused back on my food. “After he died, she... well, it was back to cereal.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“It’s all good.” I forced a smile. “I didn’t mean to bring the mood down. I just wanted to compliment the food.”
“No worries,” she said, sitting beside me. “Thank you for the compliment. It makes me happy when all my kids are happy.”
“You think of me as one of your kids?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.” She frowned. “Is that okay? I mean, I know you’ve got a mother, and she’s a great one, but I still feel like you’re one of mine, if that makes sense.”
I grinned. “It’s absolutely okay.”
She relaxed and smiled again. “Good.”
“How many times has Dad told you if you keep feeding them, they won’t leave?” Poppy sassed as she walked into the room.
Poppy was Maisie’s daughter from her late husband, but Hatch had adopted her when he and Maisie had gotten married more than two decades ago.
“Hey, poppet, I didn’t know you were coming by,” Maisie said, giving her a hug.
“I wanted to see how the invalid was doing,” she said, leaning down to kiss my cheek. “Devon and Sid took the kids to the park for a few hours.”
I grinned. Poppy had always called Hatch her ‘Stand-in-Dad,’ or Sid for short.
“Hey, Poppy.”
“Hey, bud. How are you feeling?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“Better.”
“Awesome.”
“Do you want breakfast, love?” Maisie asked.
“If you don’t mind, but I can make it.”
“Sit down, honey. I’ll take care of it.”
Poppy gave me a little grin, like she knew offering to make her own breakfast was nothing but lip service, and sat across from me.
“How long do you have to be in the chair?” she asked.
“A couple more weeks at least,” I said. “I can’t put any weight on it until it heals more. They’ll do another x-ray in two weeks and then do another cast, and I might be able to use the walker then.”
“It’ll be longer than a couple of weeks, love,” Maisie interjected.
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“Razor,” she said with a sigh.
“Oh, so, basically, you trying to walk on it the other day was totally not okay,” Poppy sassed.
“Yeah, it was totally not okay,” I parroted.
