Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
“That was today?”
They giggled. “Yes, Uncle Xan.”
“I totally spaced that.”
They shrugged. JJ, born Julia, preferred their gender-neutral name and pronouns, and liked to wear boys’ clothes. But JJ also liked to carry a mini Birken that matched their mother’s regular-sized one. At the moment, JJ had on pink gingham socks, denim overalls, and a short-sleeved shirt with sharks.
“Nice shirt.”
“Boys’ shirts have predators on them, like sharks, did you know that?”
Predators. Did most five-year-olds use that word? “I did not.”
“Girls’ shirts have bunnies or kittens or ducks.”
“Okay.”
I was certain JJ and Toby both had such amazing vocabularies, even at such young ages, because Amanda and Eddie had talked to them since they were born like they spoke to all the adults in their lives. She had been twenty-six when Toby was born, and didn’t have her own mother to turn to, and didn’t trust her mother-in-law enough to ask for advice, seeing how all her other children, Eddie excepted, had turned out.
So Amanda went with her gut, as she did with all things. She communicated with her children like they were adults. She talked to them constantly, about everything. If she had been away from them during the day for some reason—she had her own business, so most of the time, when they were infants, then toddlers, she worked from home—when she returned, she explained in excruciating detail what she had done. Once they went to nursery school, when they got home, she read to them and played with them, and there were endless adventures they went on together. And when she did have to leave them to fly away on business, she took comfort in knowing that I would step up and take care of them during the day and would hand them off to Eddie after school.
Because I had known even less than Amanda about children when she first brought Toby home, I followed her lead. I had been talking to them just like her and Eddie since they were crawling around on the floors of my cottage. And now, here I was, having a groggy conversation with her youngest at close to eleven in the morning.
“Boys’ shirts have dinosaurs on them too,” JJ continued, “and Toby says a T-Rex makes sense but not triceratops or stegosaurus or ankylosaurus because none of those ate meat. They were not predators. They ate veggies.”
“Got it.”
They studied my face for a moment.
“You have a question?”
“I asked Mom why there’s no lock on your front door, but sometimes, no matter how hard I pull, I can’t get out.”
“When has that ever happened?”
“Like when you say it’s raining too hard and you don’t want me to go outside.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then that time I brought my friend Ezra here to play, and he got to the door first, and when he tried to open it, it wouldn’t, but when I tried, it did.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I dunno, but Mom said that the door opens for us because it knows us and we belong in your house too.”
“That’s true.”
“When it keeps me in, it doesn’t want me to get sick or hurt.”
“That sounds right.”
“How does it work?”
“It’s magic,” I said because I never lied to my godchildren.
Amanda came in then, her perfume, the classic Chanel N°5, reaching me before she did. A second later she was hovering over me.
“You look nice,” I complimented her. The blue-and-white striped collared shirt paired well with the same baby-blue, long, pleated skirt.
“I also have on white backless pumps, short heel, because maybe we were supposed to be walking around the farmers’ market this morning.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
She grunted. “Did you go to the carnival last night?”
“Only briefly. I walked Father Dennis there.”
“Mom doesn’t like the carnival,” JJ chimed in. “She says it’s for children younger than us, drunks, and women of ill repute.”
“That’s so bad,” I assured her, but she only shrugged.
“What is ill repute?” JJ asked me. “I know what drunk is. Uncle Cam threw up at Easter and got it all over Aunt Denise’s shoes. Mom said he was piss drunk.”
I shot her a look.
“What? That’s Eddie’s family.”
“They’re your family too,” JJ and I said at the same time.
She shook her head in disgust.
Amanda did not believe in sugarcoating things for her children. Her parents had not been honest with her, which was why they had no relationship now. She wouldn’t let that happen with her kids. She would throw herself on a grenade for them, so she certainly was never going to hide anything, let alone her honest opinions on everything from poor management practices in the workplace, to boring white walls, to women who wore dark lipstick first thing in the morning.
“Ill repute means girls I would never let sit for you,” she told JJ.
They nodded. “I see. They have questionable morals.”
“That’s correct.”
How many five-year-olds even knew what the word questionable meant?