“Ben? Did you find that sock?” she called.
“Ummm…”
“Hoo boy,” she murmured. She glanced at her watch. She’d let him try to figure it out for… three more minutes before she went up there.
It was optimistic thinking though. She gave it about a ninety-nine percent chance that sock was long gone. She’d find it four or five laundry days from now.
Probably.
She took a slow sip of her coffee, thinking about days gone by, when she had time for breaks that lasted longer than ten seconds at a stretch. These days, if she wasn’t working or taking care of Benjamin, she was worrying about money or trying to squeeze in time for her friends… or worrying that her friends felt like she was trying to “squeeze them in” when really, they meant the world to her. And if she wasn’t doing any of those things, she was cooking, or trying to keep her house from turning into a pigsty, or doing laundry.
There was alwaysso muchlaundry to do.
And then there was the time she spent trying to find new clients and figuring out the bizarre tax situation that came from having her kind of patchwork employment, or…
Shoot! Or losing track of time!
“Ben!” she called more urgently. “We need to go!”
“Okay, Mommy,” he said, his tone already letting her know that he was about to try to explain away some kind of shenanigans. “So I didn’t find my same sock, but I did find my shoe and another sock.”
She looked down. His shoes were on the wrong feet, but thereweretwo of them. And the socks… well, one was an ankle sock that barely peeked above the top of his sneaker, while the other came more than halfway up Benjamin’s shin.
Well, they were too late to try to worry about fashion.
“Close enough,” she told him. “Swap the shoes and you’re ready to go.”
“Okay,” he said. “But what should I do if I throw up?”
June paused from where she’d turned back to zip Benjamin’s suitcase.
Benjamin asked a lot of bizarre questions, just like any other kid, but something made her think that maybe this particular question wasn’t purely hypothetical.
“Do you think you might throw up?” she asked him. “I mean, like, today?”
He nodded. “Yeah, my belly has that yucky feeling, and then I thought I was going to throw up, so I went to the bathroom, because you said I should try to throw up in the bathroom andnoton the rug, but then I didn’t throw up. Oh, wait!” He perked up. “That’s where my sock is.”
“Okay, wait, wait,” June said before Benjamin could rush off in search of his original sock. “Let me feel your forehead.” She pressed first the back of her hand, then her cheek against his forehead.
“Hm, you feel alittlewarm,” she said. “I think I’m going to take you to work with me instead of sending you to school today. Then we’ll see how you’re feeling this afternoon and go from there.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Ben said, throwing his arms around her waist and pressing his face into her stomach. This was a sure a sign as any that he wasn’t feeling well. Normally the suggestion that he spend a boring day at work with her instead of going to school to see his best pal Isabelle would be soundly and swiftly rejected.
June accepted the hug happily. Her little boy grew faster than light, or so she felt most days. She knew that soon enough she would be too uncool for him to want to hug her, so she soaked up what she could.
Even so, her mind whirled. She was housecleaning this morning, and Mrs. Richards was a long-term client, an elderly woman who lived alone and whose arthritis meant that cleaning house was a challenge for her. Mrs. Richards wouldn’t object to Benjamin hanging around while June cleaned. The diner, though… that was a different story. You couldn’t take a sick kid to a place where people were eating, not if he was coughing or sneezing at all. He wasn’t yet, but if he started, she’d have to cancel her shift, which meant she’d lose that income, which she would have to make up later, and…
Don’t borrow trouble, June-bug, she told herself, remembering the way her grandfather had always said the phrase when she got worried about things that were ahead.
She took a deep breath.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get in the car.”
She became a whirlwind of energy, swapping the backpack for a tote bag, which she filled with some of Benjamin’s favorite snacks, his water bottle, and a handful of books. She was happy to be relaxed about screen time when her son wasn’t feeling well,but kids got restless when they felt sick, so it was better to have more than less to distract them.
Even moving as quickly as she could, however, left June pulling into Mrs. Richards’ driveway ten minutes after she’d been scheduled to start her cleaning. The older woman met her at the door, although her face creased into a mask of concern when she saw Benjamin standing behind his mother.
“I’msosorry, Mrs. Richards,” June said at once. “Ben wasn’t feeling well this morning, so I didn’t want to send him to school, and shifting our plans made us late. I’ll make up the time on the end, I promise.”
