“Your mom and dad,” she said, eyes across the way on herhubby, who had little Talia on his hip.
“Worried about what?”
She looked to me.“That you don’t date.That you work andhang with Liam.Hang with Tony and me.Hang with Lena.And go home alone.Andyou do it like it’s all good for you, when they don’t know itisallgood, because the man you love is in your life in a super weird way, but still,he’s in it.And I gotta say, they know you took a big pay bump when you gotyour new job, but you were living pretty large on a court reporter’s salary,and they aren’t dumb.”
Oh boy.
She kept at me.
“Then you put the money down on that new build in Stapleton,whomp!Down payment on a brand-new house in a cushy development, andyou didn’t even blink.”
Maybe I hadn’t been as smart as I should have been aboutusing Darius’s support to take care of Liam and me.
On the one hand, if I’d made us go without to keep it fromthem, Darius would lose his mind.
On the other hand, no way was I going to accumulate tens ofthousands of dollars in my panties drawer and make my boy go without.
Okay, so maybe that was the same hand.
But I probably should have pretended I won the lottery orsomething.
“I think they’ve figured it out,” she muttered.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, horrified.“You think they have?”
Slowly, she turned her head to face me.“I respect them,Malia.And I’ve been lying to them by omission for years.”
I bit my lip.
“I love you,” she went on.“And I gotta trust you know whatyou’re doing, but something’s going to break on this, and your family is goodpeople.They don’t deserve this deception.”
I felt badly, I truly did.
But I knew what I was doing.
I hoped.
“I bought a nanny cam,” I told her.
“Say again?”she asked.
“I bought a nanny cam.It’s Eddie who breaks in and gives methe money.”
“Whoa,” she said.
“I left a note for him last time and told him to stopbreaking in and stay for a beer.He wrote back, ‘We’ll see.’”
Toni’s gaze was far away, keeping company with her thoughts.“Love my man, but I could do a beer with Eddie.”
Yeah, via the nanny cam, I learned he just got better withage.
But we needed to focus.
“I can tell them that,” I suggested.“If I tell them,they’ll know what I know.It’s from Darius.And maybe, when the time comes,they won’t…have a problem with him.”
“When the time comes for what?”
“When the time comes we can be a family.”
