“What’s going on in here?” I asked through ragged breaths.
“Potty training,” Georgia said proudly. Zach whined, teetering on the knife-edge of a tantrum as he grabbed for the fruit snack Georgia held out of reach. “Nope. I told you, buddy. This is a negotiation. You don’t get to make any demands until you drop me a deuce.”
“What’s a deuth?” Delia asked.
I followed the red trail on the floor to my bathtub. Delia’s head peeked out from a mountain of pink-stained bubbles. “Look, Mommy!” She flashed me a wide, gap-toothed smile. Her tongue poked through the bloody space where her front teeth used to be. “I loth’d my teeth!”
I sagged, holding myself up against the counter as Vero doubled over laughing behind me.
“What?” My sister scowled at us. “What’s so funny? I read all the potty training blogs. This is how you’re supposed to do it.”
Vero snorted, clutching her chest and rubbing tears from her eyes. She pulled it together long enough to pat me on the shoulder. “I’ll get the carpet cleaner and the Magic Eraser.”
“Where’s Aimee?” I pulled Zach off the potty seat as Vero went off in search of cleaning supplies. He squealed like a pissed-off pig and wriggled out of my arms, waddling out the door after Vero, an angry circle imprinted on his butt.
“You just missed her,” Georgia said. “She got a phone call a few minutes ago. Tore out of here like her hair was on fire. Must have been an emergency.” She rose stiffly to her feet, peering into the empty toilet. With a disappointed shake of her head, she popped the fruit snack in her mouth.
Exhausted and numb, I dropped to my knees beside the bathtub and planted a kiss on Delia’s suds-covered head. “What happened to Delia’s teeth?” I asked my sister.
“She got tired of wiggling them and decided she didn’t want to wait for them to fall out on their own. Aimee was busy making the popcorn. I was up here with Zach. We didn’t see Delia tie her teeth to the pantry door and kick it closed. She nearly gave Aimee a heart attack with all the screaming and the blood. It’s a good thing I was here. I don’t think Aimee could handle the gore.”
An anxious laugh bubbled out of me. I hauled Delia from the bathtub and wrapped her in a towel. “Those teeth weren’t ready to come out, sweetie. Why would you do that? That must have hurt.”
She blinked up at me as I rubbed a towel over her hair. Her tongue poked through the hole where her teeth used to be, making all of hers’s sound like a lisp. “Vero thaid it’th not enough to wantthomething. She thaid you have to make your own luck. Now the tooth fairy ith going to come, and I’ll get two hundred dollarth.”
“Two hundred dollars?” I laughed. “I don’t think the tooth fairy carries that kind of cash.”
“But I need it to help Vero.”
“Why does Vero need help?”
“I heard her talking on the phone. She thaid if she can’t get two hundred, she’ll be in big trouble.”
My face fell. “What kind of trouble?”
“A man got really mad at her becauth she lotht a marker. I told her she can have my purple one becauth I don’t like purple, but she thaid that won’t help. She needth a really big one.”
I stared after Delia as she hobbled out the door in her towel.
“What was that all about?” Georgia asked.
“No idea,” I said, pulling the plug on the drain. “I’d better go put a diaper on Zach before he releases a hostage on the floor.”
My sister laughed. “I’ll go see if Vero needs any help cleaning up the crime scene.”
“If only you could,” I said to myself when she was gone.
I found Zach hiding in his room, one hand braced on the wall, assuming the pose. “Oh, no you don’t!” I scooped him up and wrangled him into a Huggie.
When I carried him downstairs, Georgia was already mopping blood off the floor. Her nose wrinkled when I came into the kitchen. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Finn, but I can stay and keep an eye on the kids for a few more minutes if you want to grab a shower.”
“Where’s Vero?” I set Zach down, and he toddled toward the living room.
“Looking for carpet cleaner in the garage.”
We both turned as Vero burst into the kitchen. She set down a bottle of upholstery cleaner, put an arm around Georgia, and usheredher to the door, grabbing my sister’s coat from the rack and shoving it into her arms. “Thanks so much for watching the kids, Georgia. I’ll take it from here.” She took my sister’s keys from the counter and pushed them into her hand.
I turned sharply to Vero. “Georgia offered to stay and help clean up.”
