“That’s what Grammy calls him.” Harmony lifted a shoulder. She looked straight into the lens again. “Mommy calls him ‘that cheating asshole.’”
April’s lips parted and her cheeks went numb.
Oh no. No, no, no.
Given that April thought her children didn’t hear her when she talked to her friends on the phone about her ex, she should be absolved for the things she said in private. Her mouth went dry. This was how it ended. She would die of embarrassment on the floor of Earth Foods on Hampden Avenue.
She opened her mouth to explain—and maybe steal the camera and run far, far away, when Rohan wriggled out of the cart, belt still semi-attached. Somehow he hippity-hopped right out of it and lunged at a fly that had landed on one silver can of coffee.
He flicked his tongue at the can, tilted his head to the side, and said, “Ribbit.”
There was something seriously wrong with that fly’s reflexes, because Rohan got it.
“Oh my God,” April screeched, crawling closer to her son.
Okay, this wasn’t happening. She forbade it. And, since she was April, she hardly forbade anything. Going with the flow of life was literally her thing.
Harmony spoke again. “Mom also says—”
“Harmony!” April shouted as she dug the bug from her son’s mouth with her index finger. “Play the stop-talking game.”
Please, please, please make it stop.
For the first time since they’d arrived, Harmony took her cue and pressed her lips together.
Pete took that moment to sprint down the aisle toward them.
“Grab him!” Rachel yelled, missing the leash trailing behind. Pete was on the move. Where to? April didn’t know. Didn’t really care, either.
Rachel’s husband, Travis, slid around the corner into their aisle, stopping abruptly at the scene smeared out before him.
“Whose dog is this?” One of the supermarket attendants shouted from an aisle over.
“I’m coming,” April yelled. “I’ll be right there.” She heaved a breath, blowing it out through her lips. “To get…our dog.”
Could the floor open up now and just swallow her?
“He’s notourdog,” Harmony not-so-helpfully corrected.
No, he wasn’t, but April used the word “our” in the communal sense. That was a thing, wasn’t it?
“Unless we’re going to bring him home?” Harmony’s eyes lit right the hell-o up. “I want another dog. Can we take him home?”
“Oh my God.” April’s whole face, throat, chest, everything went numb. She couldn’t look into the camera. Surely they’d turned off the camera by now?
“Mom?” Harmony asked, cautious as a child recognizing her mother was about to lose her shit.
April did the in-for-five-seconds, out-for-four breathing thing that usually worked when she was about to lose her mind. It didn’t work this time.
“Yeah, baby?” she asked, the words breathier than normal with a subtle sprinkle of hysteria.
She really shouldn’t have asked.
“I think Lola peed,” Harmony said.
April glanced to the little-kid car thing with the two steering wheels, and two squeaker horns, and… the puddle of urine her daughter was soaked in.
Oh dear God.
