“I like the sound of that.” Dad smiles softly at his grandson.
“Okay, my little NHL star, how about we get some breakfast into you and grandpa?” I slip behind him and lift him up, tickling his belly.
“Can we have pancakes, Mommy?”
The wistfulness and hope in his voice is yet another dagger to my heart. We only get to share fancier breakfasts on my days off, because most others he spends without me.
“Oh, I call dibs on the chocolate chip ones,” my dad pipes up, and Emett’s brown brows pull into the cutest frown. He always looks like a little grump that way. Sometimes, it scares me how much he takes after Stella.
“You were real fast today, old man. I guess I’ll have to settle for those,” Emett says, and I let out an outraged gasp as my dad chuckles that soon enough turns into a coughing fit.
“Emett! We don’t say things like that.” I narrow my eyes at him as I move toward my father, passing him his cup of water.
“What? Nana always does!”
“Me and your nana are gonna have some words later.”
“Oh, man,” Emett pouts in that adorable kid way. “Nana’s gonna be pissed.”
I let out a strangled groan, tipping my head up when the words leave his mouth. Yep, serious words are going to be talked.
Dad laughs again. “Rory, let my grandson live a little.”
I cut him a look. “He’s four—”
“Four and three quarters,” my little smart-butt of a son interjects with his index finger up in the air.
I cluck my tongue. “Excuse me, four and three quarters. It’s too soon to start giving me gray hairs.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy, I have markers, I’ll turn them back to yellow.”
“Mommy, are we going to that slime place today?” Emett asks eagerly and with plenty of excitement in his eyes from his car seat in the back.
Well, calling my senior resident of transportation a real car is a stretch, but it drives, and for that I’m grateful. Even if it’s held up by duct tape and sheer will. I take a deep breath, my fingers tightening on the faded steering wheel.
We are alive.
We are healthy.
We have a roof over our heads and wheels to take us places we can’t walk.
We have each other.
I repeat my daily mantra and try not to dwell on all the bad that lives in the subtitles to every good thing we have. Today is my day off, and I refuse to spend it trying to figure out these problems without solutions. Today is for Emett. All my days off are for Emett.
I can’t give him much, but I can do this.
“Nope. Not the slime place.” I look in the rearview mirror to see his small brows furrow, that four-year-old brain in deepthought as to what we could possibly be doing today until he freezes, and his eyes grow so wide I’m afraid they might pop out.
Well, it looks like he’s figured it out. Honestly, I’m surprised I was able to keep it a surprise this long seeing as he’s been begging me to take him there for days.
“Mommy, I hope you’re not joking right now because it would be very mean to joke like that, and you always tell me to be nice, so I need you to be nice too and tell me you’re not joking,” Emett rushes out all in one breath as his voice pitches higher and higher toward the end of it.
I let out a soft laugh, his excitement warming my chest and shake my head. “I wouldn’t do that to my favorite son now, would I?”
“I’m your only son, Mommy,” he deadpans, the sound way too old for his age but that’s my Emett in a nutshell. “You gotta say it.” He pops his eyes out at me, and I laugh harder.
“I’m not joking. We are going to see my best friend Electra and your favorite hockey player, Exton Quinn.”
