Hunter
There’safingerinthe flowers.
That’s… new.
All the years that Xavier has been sending a bouquet to me every week, this is the first time there’s been a severed digit. It’s not his; I can tell that much.
I shouldn’t be relieved about that.
My daughter’s humming, as she swings her legs and eats her breakfast, reminds me that I’m not alone. Quickly putting the lid back on the box—should I be grateful they packaged it?—I shove it back into the base of the elaborate flowers. I’ll have to investigate the finger further. There has to be some kind of reason behind it. The flowers will go in Olivia’s room, where they always go. She knows they’re from her father, and she diligently waters them every day until the next set comes along. I wonder what Xavier would think, knowing what happens to his gift. He’s never met her; I doubt he thinks of her at all.
“I hate rock melon,” Olivia decides abruptly after eating almost her entire bowl, which included a good portion of the fruit in question.
“Do you?” It took her that long to decide?
“Hate it. Hate it. Hate it!” She grimaces and pushes her bowl away. Sneaks another piece of the fruit and then drops the fork into the bowl with aclang.
“Hate is a strong word. Are you sure you want to waste it on fruit?”
“It’s poser watermelon.”
I almost spit out my own fruit. That’s a new one. “Where did you hear that word?”
“Nowhere.”
I highly doubt that. Nothing she’s read lately, nor movies, has that word. And Jericho doesn’t use it. It has to have come from somewhere. School, probably. “Vee.”
“Peyton said it yesterday, and he told me what it means.”
I hesitate to ask in what context my brother’s boyfriend—one of four—used the word. “You toldmeyesterday”—though admittedly, before Peyton watched her for an hour while Jericho and I were busy with work—“that you were over watermelon and threatened to stand on it in the supermarket. With your shoes off.”
She giggles and drags the bowl back, eating another piece. “It gets in your toes.”
And it gets you kicked out of the store. I’m lucky she was still wearing her shoes by the time we left. And that she didn’t leave her backpack in some random aisle because she was sick of carting it around. That’s happened more often than I’d like to admit.
“If you’re done eating, go get your bag and your reader. And find your shoes.”
“I want to play Captain Toad.”
“If you do what I ask, maybe you can play for half an hour after school.” She knows better than to think I’d let her play video games before school. I’d never get her out the door.
She squints suspiciously at me. “Promise?”
“Pinky promise.”
She holds out her little finger, not trusting me in the least unless we seal the pact in the age-old ritual. Once she’s satisfied, she carefully scrapes the rest of her fruit into my bowl and then puts hers in the sink. She must really want to play Captain Toad.
I’m almost done rinsing the breakfast dishes when my older brother, Jericho, waltzes through the back door. I’m still getting used to not having him in the house, not having himhereall the time.
“I’m here, I’m not late,” he says in a rush, slamming the door closed behind him.
“Did you think you were going to be?” I ask, amused. I know exactly why he thinks he may have been late. He and his men have trouble keeping their hands off each other. I’m surprised any of them make it to work on time.
“No. Shut up.” He sneers at the flowers. “Want me to take them out back and burn them?”
“Olivia wouldn’t appreciate that.”
“She’s never even met him; I don’t know why she’d care.”
