Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 107352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
“I don’t really like that lawyer,” Tatum said, sounding quite judgmental.
“Oh?” I teased her. “And why is that?”
“He likes you too much.”
“What’s that now?” Luke asked his daughter.
She groaned. “He was all call me for anything.” She made it sound far more torrid than it actually was.
“She’s right,” Griff said, putting a plate of eggs and bacon and sliced tomatoes down in front of me. The tomatoes had a light dusting of garlic salt on them and a bit of fresh mozzarella.
“Now we’re talkin’,” I said excitedly. “This looks great, Griff.”
He grunted.
I gave him my attention. “What? It does.”
“Mr. Kinney was hitting on you,” Griff told me.
I squinted at him before taking a napkin and a fork from the wicker caddy on the table. This was yet another recent purchase. It was lined in fabric that appeared to be from a really ugly Aloha shirt, but there were places for forks, spoons, and knives. Plus, you could easily carry it by the handle to and from the kitchen to refill. “Could you please concern yourself with your father’s plate?”
He scoffed, added a disgusted, dismissive sound on top of it that made me smile, and when my gaze lifted from my plate, Luke was staring at me.
“Your kids are a bit too observant,” I commented. “It’s annoying.”
“It’s true about them being observant,” he agreed softly, grabbing a napkin and fork. “They miss nothing.”
I started eating, and he admired the caddy.
“It makes it easier, and we all like it,” Tatum stated, taking a seat beside me, smiling at her father as she put her elbows on the table and then rested her chin on the backs of her hands. “So, Dad, I have something to tell you.”
“Okay,” he said as Griff set a plate in front of him with eggs and bacon, but instead of tomatoes, he’d added cubed fruit. He glanced up at his son. “I love fruit, but why don’t I get any tomatoes?”
Griff smiled at him. “I didn’t know you liked tomatoes.”
“I do,” he assured his son.
“Okay, then,” he said and left us.
Luke returned his attention to his daughter. “Okay, baby, hit me.”
She cleared her throat. “We’re normalizing talking about Mom.”
Fortunately, he had swallowed a blueberry. A piece of cantaloupe might have required me to get up and give him the Heimlich. As it was, he still nearly choked to death. Darwin quickly brought him a large glass of water, and one for me as well, and once the man could breathe again, we all waited on him.
“I’m sorry, love,” he rasped, his eyes watering, this time not in grief or regret, but having narrowly escaped death. “What did you say?”
She giggled. “I like your voice like this.”
He coughed again and took several sips of water.
“I just wanted you to know that once Mom left, we all basically treated her like she died, and that’s really terrible.”
It was so interesting to hear words I used filter into their vocabulary. I said terrible a lot, and now, so did the kids.
Luke nodded to his daughter because it was true. He’d been treating his wife like she died and so had the kids.
“We’ve all been super worried about talking about her, and one of the reasons is because we didn’t want to make each other sad.”
“That makes sense.”
“But we’ve talked, and we’re all fine bringing her up. And yeah, I get sad, so do Griff and Dar, but that’s okay.”
“Yes, it is,” he agreed.
“But we all hope you won’t be sad.”
“Oh no, sweetheart, I won’t be. I’m not sad now and won’t be in the future. I was mostly angry, but you’re right, you should talk about your mom.”
“And you’ll be okay?” she asked him, leaning forward like an interrogator.
“I will be okay. I swear,” he asserted. “And honestly, I’ve been finished being upset at what she did for a while now. I’m sorry I didn’t share that with all of you, because having to guess how another person feels is the worst.”
“Do you promise it’s okay?” Darwin asked as he put a glass of milk in front of his sister, and then her plate, which had a lot of fruit, some bacon, and scrambled eggs.
“Thank you,” she said to her brother, and then leaned sideways and called over to her older one, “Thank you for the strawberries, Griff, and for the powdered sugar on the side.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, bringing a plate over for Darwin that was similar to mine without the tomatoes, only fruit for him, and no strawberries in his mix, and a small plate of tomatoes for his father.
“Thank you,” Luke said to Griff, then looked at his younger son. “Honestly, I miss her mostly for you guys, but you have to know that even if she were here, we wouldn’t still be living together.”
“Because she cheated with Mr. Conti?” Darwin asked.