I rubbed the back of my neck. “This one came out of the blue,” I admitted.
She nodded. “As long as this isn’t a regular thing, it’s fine. We do have an after school club if you find you need more time before picking him up.”
“Could I have the information on that?” I asked. “I’m starting nursing school and will be shadowing Dr. Proslo, and I’m not sure how that will affect my schedule.”
“Certainly!” She picked up a data pad and tapped the screen. “I’ve sent it to your pad. There’s a sign up link on the information page.” She gave Neal a huge smile. “Bye, Neal! Enjoy your new home!”
Neal stared at me, wide-eyed.
“We moveded?” His voice sounded small and scared.
“Yep, Daddy got made an officer so they sent this whole team of warriors and the fleet commander’s wife came and everything!” I told him, making myself sound gleefully excited. “And Xero decorated your room with even more Lilo and Stitch! It’s way cool. It’s much bigger so now we’ll definitely have room for a dog or a cat.”
He perked up. “We can get both!”
I laughed. “One pet at a time, buddy. We have to ease Daddy into these things.”
Neal nodded his head. “Yeah. He’s gots to see how cool having one is, so he wants another one.”
He reached to slip his hand in mine, and I breathed an inner sigh of relief. The poor kid must have thought he’d been the one moved to another family, even though he’d been adopted. I made the decision then and there that once Jolar was home, I’d talk to him about adding Neal to the wedding ceremony where we’d give him something to signify that he’d taken us both as his dads and we’d taken him as our son. A bracelet maybe, with mine and Jolar’s birthstones on either side of his. Did Mylos even have birthstones?
“We need to finish putting your stuff where you want it,” I told him. “Can you do that? All your furniture is where it needs to go.” I made a face. “I’ve got to move a few things around in the rest of the house. The warriors tried to put everything in sort of the same places as in our last place, but since the rooms are different, it doesn’t quite work.
He nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. I can help. I can finish my room by myself. I’m not a little kid anymore. I go to Kindergarten now.”
I smiled down at him. “Great! So let's have a snack first, then we can get started, yeah? Daddy is down on earth working, so he’s probably going to be late. How about after we finish the rooms, I make us some fried chicken?”
“With mashed ‘tatoes and gravy?”
“Of course!”
He bounced in excitement. “Then we can watch Lilo and Stitch!”
Oh boy. Still, it would help settle him into our new space.
“And then we can watch Lilo and Stitch,” I agreed. And that gave me another idea. We’d talked about getting married on a cruise to Hawaii. What if the town in the movie was based on a real place? How cool would that be? Oh! And if it was, what if Neal adopted a pet from the shelter there? I simply had to find out.
“Here we are!” I said, stopping in front of our new door.
“Hooray!” Neal said, letting go of my hand to dash inside as soon as the door opened.
Yep, he was going to settle in just fine.
CHAPTER23
JOLAR
Body foundand duly dug up and placed in a body bag by the coroner, we expanded our search as unobtrusively as possible to make sure we were truly done at the site. No other bodies were found, thankfully.
“Well, the lab uses your DNA matching tech, so as soon as the coroner sends over a sample, we’ll know pretty much right away,” Agent Peterson informed us. “We’ll let you know what they find.”
The L.T.C. raised an eyebrow. “Our suspect and case, so why is the information coming to you first?”
“Because the evidence was found on our planet!” he snapped.
Agent Jeffries wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something bad. “The director will probably insist they send it to you at the same time,” he admitted.
Sachuu inclined his head politely. “That makes more sense. That way we can continue with our investigation, and you can check to see if this might have any bearings on any unsolved cases you have.” It went unsaid that he was referring to missing persons cases.
