Grabbing my small wrist purse, I’m halfway out the door when my phone rings.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I answer when I see Charlotte’s name and image flash on the screen.
“If you happen to come home and are missing one of your sons, I buried him in the sand for the crabs to eat.”
Foregoing the elevator, I walk to the end of the corridor and push open the exit door to the stairwell.
“What did Christopher do this time?”
Instead of a love-hate relationship, she and Christopher are more love-irritate. Typical sibling stuff. It’s quite funny most of the time—until Christopher goes too far and makes her cry. She’s not crying now, so things haven’t gone nuclear yet.
“I have a giant smiley face sunburned into my back.”
Christopher’s voice booms over the line, “You asked me to help put sunscreen on you!” I hear athwack, then Christopher’s, “Ow!”
“You’re a turd.”
I fold my lips to stop my laughter from escaping. “Baby, it’ll fade. Think of it as a sun tattoo.”
A happy gasp. “Oh my gosh! I love that! I need to make a video.”
“Hey! Wait one second,” I say before I lose her to social media.
“Put her on speaker so I can talk to her,” Christopher says.
“You have your own phone. Use it.”
Stopping on the bottom step, I lean back against the railing and try to defuse World War III from starting.
“I loved the picture you sent. Wish I was there with you.”
“I wish I was in Italy withyou,” Charlotte replies.
“You wouldn’t see any of it because you’d be too busy sucking face with Grant—Ow!Stop throwing things at me!” Christopher yells.
“I know you both don’t want to be grounded when I come home.” That seems to put a stop to their impending blowup. “Where’s Marcus?”
“He and Uncle Julien went to gas up the jet skis,” Charlotte replies.
Christopher pipes up. “Love you, Mom. Miss you. Can’t wait for you to be back!”
A door closes.
“Did he leave?”
“The girl he’s been flirting with all week just showed up.In a bikini,” Charlotte conspiratorially whispers.
I have a feeling that she’s standing at the large picture window that faces the beach with her nose pressed to the glass.
“Don’t spy on him. It’s rude.”
I know my words will fall on deaf ears, but I say it anyway.
She snorts. “He spies on me all the time. Every time Grant and I are kiss?—”
I pull the phone away from my ear so I don’t hear the rest of that sentence.
And what the hell, Julien? He and Elijah are supposed to be supervising, not letting our kids make out like horny teenagers—which they are.
