“Come on, your mother would miss you like crazy, and she needs you.”
“I’m mad at her,” he finally admits and wipes away a tear that escapes from his eye. “If it wasn’t for her, we would still be a family.”
“We don’t know that, buddy,” I say honestly. “What we do know is we love you. It’s hard for everyone, including your mother.” I walk around the island and pull him off the stool, and he wraps his long legs around me. “I’m here for you whenever you want, buddy,” I say into his neck. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Dad.” He dislodges himself from me. “I’m going to go and get dressed,” he mumbles low.
I nod at him. When he walks out of the room, I have to look up at the ceiling, knowing I’m going to have to have a conversation with Josephine. I really don’t want to, but it needs to be done.
I follow the kid upstairs, getting dressed in jeans and a shirt, grabbing my phone and heading out toward Josephine’s house. We pull up and the kids get out and, unlike all the other times with me hugging them outside, I walk up the steps with them. I ring the doorbell at the same time the kids open the door and walk in. “Mommy,” Nora yells, “we’re home!”
I don’t move from the front porch as she comes into view, wearing workout clothes, her eyes going big when she sees me standing here. “Hey,” I say to her.
“Hey.” She walks to the door, giving all the kids hugs before turning to me. “You want to come in?”
“No, but if you have a minute,” I tell her, and she looks over her shoulder at the kids.
“I just took some banana muffins out of the oven not long ago. You can have a snack,” she announces, and they walk back into the house. “What’s up?” she asks me.
“You went to my parents’ house last week?” I don’t know if I’m asking her or not.
“Am I not allowed to have a relationship with your parents?” She becomes defensive.
“You can have a relationship with the fucking UPS driver, for all I care.” I put my hands on my hips. “But Vincent was not okay with it.” Her face goes white.
“Well, you can blame your sister for that one.”
“Yeah, because I’m sure she pushed Jeremy to fuck you,” I retort and then I hold up my hand. “Anyway, needless to say, Vincent knows about you two.”
“Great, you told him.”
“I didn’t have to, he heard my sister and Jeremy fighting about you.” I point at her. “I think we should have him talk to someone about all of this.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She rolls her eyes.
“It’s not ridiculous,” I snap at her. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you that I’m going to have him talk to someone. You can either agree to it, or I’ll take him when it’s my time.”
“People get divorced all the time,” she states. “My parents are divorced.”
“I don’t think that is going to win your case,” I tell her. “He was scared to talk to me about it and it was festering in him for a whole week.” She doesn’t say anything. “So you can either help me find someone for him to talk to, or I can do it on my own.”
“I’ll talk to his pediatrician and let you know.”
“Thank you.” I turn to walk down the steps to my SUV.
I open my SUV door and pull out of the driveway. “That was a very mature thing for you to do,” I tell myself. I’m almost tempted to call my father and tell him about it, but since all this has happened, things with us have been strained and I don’t want it to be even more.
I get home and walk into the quiet house, going to clean the kitchen, distracting myself from the most recent Josephine drama. But as what seems to be normal recently, my thoughts drift back to Kylie.
She’s really cool. I hear Vincent’s voice in my head. Taking out my phone, I pull up the email she sent me this week about my winning bids for the items.
Her cell number is on the bottom of the email. I click on the number and copy it to text.
Me:
Had a dream about you last night.
I press send and then close my eyes. “What the fuck?” I mumble to myself then go back to the text.
