I groaned but followed her inside, closing the door once Luca had skipped in behind us.
After a mac and cheese dinner, a bath that ended in a bubble blowing competition, and about five hundred bedtime stories, we sat in front of the pieces that would make up a TV cabinet…if put together correctly.
“How in the world is this piece supposed to fit?” I asked and held up a square screw that according to the graphics was meant to go into one of the predrilled holes.
“I don’t know. But the drawers are all yours. I can’t figure out how to get them together. And I still haven’t found the packet of dowels that’s supposed to be in here. Did you see it anywhere?”
I pointed to the couch. “I think they were under there.”
Nora plopped down on her belly and put her hand under the couch. After pulling out a half-eaten apple, a few Legos and a rattle, she resurfaced with the missing dowels. “Aha. Got the little suckers.”
“Did you work yesterday?” I asked while trying to hammer in a nail.
“Yeah. Nicolette was sick, so I had to go in.”
I looked up from denting the drawers. “Shit, why didn’t you call me? Who watched the kids?”
Nora studied the instructions and didn’t answer. But I knew she heard me.
I wasn’t easily deterred and pulled the instructions away. “Who did you ask?”
“Hey, I was reading that. It’s going to be your fault if I screw this up.”
“Stop avoiding the question. And we would have screwed it up anyway. That’s why you got glue,” I said and pointed the pamphlet at the big bottle of wood glue that was patiently waiting for its turn on the table.
“Mason,” she said and picked at her nails.
“What about him?”
“He came over to watch the kids.”
I dropped the pamphlet, my body feeling weightless. “Did you just say Mason came over to stay with the kids?”
“Yes?” she mumbled her answer like it was a question.
“Why?” I couldn’t think of a good reason why he would help my friend out. There was nothing in it for him. It did explain his disappearance last night. Which gave me time to change his alarm clock. And now I felt awful for thinking that he was going out to hook up with someone—aka the blonde—when he just disappeared.
“He offered.”
“But why would he do that?”
“He said he had nothing better to do.”
He was so confusing. My head was spinning from the contradictions that were Mason. “He had nothing better to do?” I repeated.
“He was great with the kids. They absolutely loved him. Luca even asked me if I can go to work tonight so his new friend could come over again.”
“But I’m their favorite,” I said in a small voice.
“You are. But now they have another friend. You know how hard it is for Luca to trust new people. But it took him not even an hour before he showed Mason his dinosaurs.”
“But he never shows them to anyone but me,” I whined.
Nora nudged me with her foot. “It’s a good thing. Stop complaining. Nobody can replace you. They just got another person in their corner. You should be happy.”
And if it was anyone but Mason, I would be happy for them, because Nora’s kids deserved the world. Her parents didn’t talk to her and wanted nothing to do with the kids. And the kids’ dad had left a few days after Lena was born, and she hadn’t heard from him since. Any extra support was a godsend. But she had let Mason look after the kids when I was supposed to be helping her. I felt betrayed, as irrational as that was.
“And you just let a stranger look after your kids?”
