“Here, Dad.”Blaine hands the popcorn back.“Can you put this in that little shed near Pudge’s yard on the way out?”
I can’t help my smile at her casual dismissal.It would have been rude coming from me, but my own little precocious daughter meant no insult, so he can’t take offense.“Yes, could you, please?”I toss my head at the back door, which is presumably how he let himself in.Our door’s essentially always open, thanks to all the animal chores we help with.
Mason takes the popcorn, and he shrugs.“Sure, but I also came by to invite your mom to lunch.”
“I respectfully decline,” I say.
His brow furrows, and his lips compress.
“I have a very busy day, and as you can imagine, with a million things that need doing around here, I don’t see the rest of the week being better.”Plus, there’s absolutely zero reason for us to go to lunch.
He sighs.“Well, I thought you might want to sit down and pick what weekends would work best for the kids to stay with me, but if you’d like me to just select which ones?—”
“Fine.”I would rather go over something like that in a public place, instead of having him just pop up here.“Yes, we can take our calendars and sit and eat a sandwich while we talk about what weeks I’llbe generous enoughto let you have the kids.”
His furrowed brow graduates to a scowl.“You know very well the reason?—”
But the other kids are coming down the stairs like a herd of water buffalo, and he snaps his mouth shut.At least he’s trying to be pleasant, especially when they’re around.And it’s been a few weeks since he’s tried to entice me to go on a date, so maybe he’s not entirely mentally unhinged.
“Pudge will be so happy you came by.”Which is about as close as I can get to telling him to get out without actually saying it.“Thanks for the popcorn.”
Mason still looks stormy as he stomps out.I’m annoyed at how good-looking he still is, in spite of age, a divorce, and alotof dishonest and even some criminal activity.Shouldn’t people’s outsides match their insides?
I’m still in a funk when Paul pokes my leg.“Mummy, thanks for the granola bar.”
I frown.“We didn’t have granola bars.We had?—”
“He means, the bar of stuff to add to the granola,” Amelia says.“Like the burrito bars you do, but with yogurt and granola.”
That makes me smile.I made the kids agranola bar.I laugh.“Sure, okay.”It’s always funny to me when something’s true, but it doesn’t mean what your brain has been conditioned to think it means.“Maybe we’ll have granola bars for breakfast more often.”
Amelia and Blaine look at each other and at the very same time, they both say, “Nature Valley Granola Bars.”
A chill runs up my arm.“What was that?”
Hannah’s head turns slowly toward mine.“They say twins will have their own language, and that no one can break into their special relationship.”
“But ours never do,” Clara says.“They just fight.”
“Except for whatever weird Twilight Zone crap that was,” Hannah says.
Amelia and Blaine are now laughing in an almost unhinged way.
“What’s going on?”I bump Blaine’s shoulder, since she’s closest to me, standing near the table.
“Nothing.”Blaine looks at Amelia and they start giggling all over again.
Finally, I roll my eyes and start ushering people toward the door.As usual, Hannah’s gathering dishes up from wherever people abandoned them and setting them in the sink.Her biggest family chore is loading the dishes and hand washing anything that needs it.She takes it seriously, and she gets annoyed when people don’t at least rinse their stuff.“Always leaving the gross food to just crust on there,” she’s muttering as she rinses the end of Paul’s granola down the drain.
Our sink didn’t have a garbage disposal when we got here, but that’s the first thing I had Samantha help me install.Luckily, she’s decent with plumbing, because my kids puteverythingdown the sink drain, except for eggshells and potato peels.I think I’ve adequately drilled it into their heads that they can’t shove those down and expect it not to clog.
“Alright,” I say.“Everyone in the cars.”I wish it could be one car, but that would basically shaft Vanessa.It hardly seemed the kind thing to do.
Clara got her license to drive here, which they call a Category B for cars, but she could do it because she was seventeen.Trace won’t be seventeen until almost Christmas, so he just has a provisional license to drive a car.He’s old enough to drive a scooter, but neither Vanessa nor I thought that was a great plan.
That means Clara can drive the older kids—I bought a little Volkswagen Golf for her—and Vanessa and I trade off taking Paul, Amelia, Blaine, and Trina.Their school’s close, but the drop-off is annoying.Plus, I didn’t want to buy a car that seated eight just so that Clara could drive all the kids around for two months.
Vanessa’s already looking at cars for Trace, so I assume he’ll get something soon, and then those two can trade off dropping the little kids at school in the morning.That’ll be super nice.
