Working late again.
Lucky inched his Camaro down Peachtree Street, gridlocked in the evening’s mass exodus from Atlanta. Way too many cars.
After way too damned long, he broke relatively free of bumper-to-bumper traffic and managed to reach over thirty miles per hour the rest of the way home.
The community gates stood wide open today. They’d never been much protection anyway—the reason he’d tightened security on the house. The house needed repairs and appeared run down—not the most desirable target for would-be thieves—but the place sported $5,000 worth of security system.
So far.
In addition, the shaggy, four-legged alarm worked about half the time, though the cat might trip intruders. Lucky eased the door open, listening for massive paws approaching at high speeds. Good. No fending off doggy kisses today.
Still, Lucky’s heart fell a little. No Bo. More and more his partner stayed late at work. Yeah, learning a new job took time, but Lucky liked coming home to his man.
Oh! Something sure smelled good. Tomato? Yes, definitely hints of tomato in there. Spices? His stomach rumbled.
He tossed his keys on the table by the front door and followed his nose to the kitchen door, in time to hear his sister hiss, “Someone’s home. I gotta go.”
Who was she talking to?
He pushed on through. Charlotte stirred something in a pan, humming softly to herself while slipping her cellphone into the back pocket of her jeans.
Lucky opened and closed his mouth, managed to keep from asking questions he’d no business asking. She had the right to talk to whoever she wanted to on the telephone. Though curious about who’d been on the other end of the line, and why she didn’t want to be caught talking to them, he’d keep quiet.
For now.
Besides, she wouldn’t be doing something wrong with her kid a few feet away, right?
Ty sat at the kitchen table, books open, scrawling in a notebook. Who would have thought Lucky’s life would include such a picture of domestic bliss?
A bag from a CVS drugstore sat on the counter. Oh shit. CVS bags meant one thing these days—and not Lucky visiting a local pharmacy for work purposes. Charlotte often joked about merely walking past her ex-husband in the hallway and getting pregnant with Todd and Ty, but after four months of trying with Bo’s sperm, nothing.
Four months wasn’t a long time. Rett said it took two years for one of her sisters to conceive. Two years. Damn. Long time. Sooner or later they’d have to share their plans with the rest of the family. He voted for later.
Much later. As in, when the kid turned old enough to vote.
If and when Charlotte managed to get pregnant. Four months was nothing to be depressed about. Yet Lucky shared her pain when she swore each month, proclaiming, “Damn it! It didn’t take!” Was she afraid he’d change his mind if things didn’t progress quickly? Or maybe it was the embarrassment of delivering cups of Bo’s cum to her bedroom door, knowing what happened next.
Calendars, thermometers, eating right, all figured into her “get Charlotte pregnant plan”. There was really no hurry, but if she got pregnant today, Lucky would be thirty-nine years old when the baby came. He’d attend his child’s high school graduation pushing sixty.
Some of the parents dropping kids off when Lucky drove up with his nephew Ty every weekday morning appeared too young to have kids in high school. How would he look in his mid-forties, depositing his kid at kindergarten? Would the other children believe Lucky was the child’s grandfather?
Then again, he’d grown up in an area where eighty percent of his former classmates married before age twenty and were parents before twenty-two. Most of those young parents hadn’t yet learned the life lessons necessary to take care of themselves, let alone a child. Bo and Lucky had experience, good jobs, a decent house — providing no one looked too closely at the work he’d yet to complete on repairs — and plenty of people waiting to welcome the child into their lives.
Lucky’s mother might be shocked at how he and Bo went about becoming parents, and although he spoke to his father on occasion, they hadn’t quite repaired their bond to the point Lucky spoke freely. Walter and his wife, Loretta Johnson and her son, and the crazy cat lady Mrs. Griggs all looked forward to a little Harrison-Schollenberger.
Or should Lucky change his name back to Lucklighter before time to make out a birth certificate?
He dropped a kiss on his sister’s offered cheek. “Hey.” She turned and gave him a one-armed hug while stirring the pot with the other hand. “How was your day?”
“Oh, same old, same old.” Since giving up her life in Spokane to move to Atlanta, she’d not left the house much, except to go with Lucky to the firing range, pick her son up from school, or visit her other son at Clemson University. She needed to get out more.
Besides trips to the local CVS.
But not with Lucky’s latest trainee. Come to think of it, he didn’t know too many people worthy of dating his sister. Maybe he should take applications.
If and when Charlotte showed any interest in dating.
“Supper sure smells good. What ya cooking?”
