“Yes. Thank you,” Charlotte easily cut in, and the way she tilted her head made the few raindrops clinging to the ends of her hair drip down onto her collarbone… and then farther… down her chest.
Sutton watched one for long moments, mesmerized, before—no.
She snapped her eyes back to Charlotte’s, where an expectantly raised eyebrow met her. “May I come in?”
“Of course!”
She moved to the side and let Charlotte in. Charlotte brushed by her, the movement seeming somehow both casual and slower than normal. Her scent, the clean, fresh floral, seemed to surround Sutton. God. That was why she stayed farther away from Charlotte during their meetings. She deliberately sat away from her because it was so easy to remember things she did not want to remember when she smelled that scent.
Charlotte walked slowly down her entrance hallway, sliding her rain jacket down her arms as she looked over her shoulder at Sutton. “Coming?”
Sutton swallowed hard and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t getting in over her head.
It was so surreal.
Seeing Charlotte in her home at all, looking at the photos on the walls—some that were the same as the ones she’d had back in the day, and many that were new.
Having Charlotte sit, in her Versace suit, at her kitchen table, which had a small chip in its side from Lucy’s last birthday, when she’d gotten a skateboard from Alex and had run around the house waving it in excitement until she’d smacked it right into the edge of the table.
And mostly, watching Charlotte interact with Lucy. They were two parts of Sutton’s life that had never, ever collided. And she’d never once expected them to.
“You’re the lady on the boring TV that Mama watches,” Lucy commented easily after giving Charlotte a long look and sticking her fork into her mashed potatoes.
Charlotte arched her eyebrows at Lucy, shuffling just enough in her seat to tell Sutton that she may be able to face down anyone in Congress but that she was uncomfortable with a six-year-old. “The boring TV?”
She looked between Sutton and Lucy.
Sutton pushed down a laugh. “The news. CNN. You know.”
Then Charlotte’s face transformed into a laugh with Lucy that was unexpectedly soft. It stole the smile from Sutton’s face. “The boring TV seems very apt.”
Lucy nodded in confirmation, dropping her fork and using both hands to grab her plastic cup of water. “You’re on there sometimes.” She took a big sip of water before grabbing her fork again and holding it up like a fake microphone. “And earlier today in the world, there was a big problem with all the old poops who run the gover-gover-ment.”
Charlotte’s snort shocked Sutton, but it sounded very genuine. “That also seems very apt.”
“I think someone’s been listening to her grandfather a little too much,” Sutton commented, suppressing her own smile before she said, “I also think we have a rule against bathroom talk when we eat, no?”
“But I wasn’t doing bathroom talk! I only had to say poops because it was about people, not actual?—”
“Fresh-baked brownies are on the line, honey. Let’s think about that.” This was high stakes for Sutton in a way she wasn’t sure Charlotte understood. It had become especially high stakes after the time a year ago when Sutton had gotten an earful from Lucy’s teacher about her daughter regaling her classmates with a lively story about the hole pee comes from at snack time.
Since then, they’d had a hard and fast rule about no talk about anything regarding the bathroom at mealtimes.
Lucy nodded seriously, stabbing her fork through a part of her roast as she dramatically sighed. “Oookay.” She was quiet for a few moments, but Sutton knew it wouldn’t last. “Did you know that Jonah Newton in my class brought his lizard in at show-and-tell?”
She wasn’t informing Sutton of this; Sutton had already heard the whole story earlier. No, Lucy’s blue eyes were focused on Charlotte, who finished chewing her food slowly, seeming alarmed that she was the point of contact yet again. “I hadn’t heard, no.”
“My teacher said that she was going to lose her mind if Jonah brought in an animal again, after he brought in a snake from the playground last month. And Auntie Regan says that most of the people who are on the boring TV are people who have lost their minds. So I didn’t know if you knew.” Lucy shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world, still staring expectantly at Charlotte.
Charlotte lifted her eyebrows and nodded slowly. “Auntie Regan certainly has a lot of opinions.”
Lucy smiled and nodded quickly. “Yep! And so do I!”
“She really does,” Sutton affirmed affectionately before she reached out and swiped Lucy’s chin with her napkin before a line of gravy could fall onto her shirt. She’d long become an expert at spotting those moments with her messy eater.
“I’ll let you know something: I do, too,” Charlotte murmured conspiratorially, keeping her voice low as she leaned in a bit closer to Lucy.
Lucy leaned in, too, seeming enthralled. “What do you do on the TV?”
