Luke stretched his body with the most adorable new baby arm pump. Aw, the little dude was just the sweetest. Maybe Sadie should consider a kiddo for herself. She didn’t necessarily need the guy to go along with a baby.
Marlee lifted him from the carrier, and baby Luke took that moment to spit up all over his mother’s shoulder while simultaneously releasing a gurgling noise in the diaper region.
Sadie side-eyed her brother and best friend. Their eyes were wide, mouths slack, eyebrows raised.
That sound could not possibly be considered normal.
Perhaps Sadie would go the way of Kellie and just get a cat instead.
Eli grabbed a paper towel to mop up Marlee’s shoulder. “Is that normal?”
“How the hell do I know?” Marlee held a squirming Luke against her now puked-on shoulder.
“It didn’t even sound human.” Eli seemed to be willing the child to stop making the noise. Also, he was correct, it sounded like something from one of those scary alien movies that Sadie liked to watch to creep herself out.
She was definitely getting a cat. Not even a kitten, she’d go for the full-grown variety that didn’t want to be petted and avoided her in favor of licking his penis.
“You have to know. You’re his mom.” Eli tossed the paper towel into the wastebasket, more perplexed than the time when he was seventeen and he accidentally backed into Dad’s car with Mom’s car and he didn’t want to tell anyone. Except, Sadie had seen the whole thing, so she totally ratted him out.
“Are you kidding me?” Marlee’s voice got progressively higher.
“Didn’t they teach you that kind of thing?” Eli was frantic.
“Who wouldteachme what to do when my kid makes that noise?”
Sadie? Sadie wasn’t too concerned. The kid was a Howard male and she’d heard some of the noises that came out of her dad and Eli over the years.
Once Luke finished, someone just had to change his diaper.
For the record, it wouldn’t be her.
Gah, she hoped they had diapers. Surely, they had diapers.
“Who isthey? They didn’t teach me anything.” Marlee continued looking at her son like he was a bomb about to explode. “What did they teach you in dad school?”
Luke grunted and made a very unnatural sound in his pants.
Sadie’s gaze bounced back and forth between Eli and Marlee like a ping-pong ball in the world championship ping-pong match.
“Let’s look online,” Marlee suggested.
“What about the book we got at that breathing class?” Eli asked.
Marlee paused, her eyes turning to slits. “The labor skills workshop?”
“The lady said it had answers.” Eli started pulling open drawers. “Where is it?”
“You’re right. The book.” Marlee handed Luke to Eli. “I’ll find the book. I think I know where it is.”
“Maybe we should call the nurse line?” Eli asked.
Was Sadie imagining things or was there a trace of sweat beading on her brother’s forehead? He’d always gotten all kinds of sweaty when something stressed him out.
These two would be a disaster in a courtroom.
“Book. Then nurse line.” Marlee hustled to the office off the kitchen.
“Or, since Mom’s upstairs finishing up, you could just ask her?” Sadie offered. Given her mother’s commitment to hospital-grade corners when she made a bed, it’d be a minute before she came down. “She’s had a lot of kids, you know.” Five to be exact, which Eli knew, seeing as he was one of them.
