Just for fun she vajazzled herself.
No, no, that was alarming.
She restored her standard fluffy wedge.
Then she mentally pushed those two people up against each other’s bodies.
Wrapped them together.
Whoa.
Lust skewered her, and the breath-stealing spiky rush of heat skittering over her skin was delicious, but she didn’t have the luxury of standing there in front of the whiteboard, frivolously savoring it. She banished it. She ought not to have even summoned it.
It was right about then that Annelise had gotten awfully quiet behind her. No spoon clinking against the soup bowl.
“Are you ever going to eat that lion, Leesy?” she said absently.
“Mama?”
“Yeah, sweet thing?”
“I don’t feel good.”
Eden whirled, the marker held aloft like a saber, ready to rush into mom battle. “In what way?”
“My throat hurts.”
Annelise put the grilled cheese lion down and propped her cheek on her hand.
Eden all but lunged for her and lay the back of her hand against Annelise’s forehead. Her heart gave a little lurch.
“Oh, honey. You’re warm. Who in your class is sick?”
“Emily, Tobin, and Braden.”
“Allof them? Cheezus!”
“It’s hard to tell. Tobin kind of always has some snot on him, but he stayed home yesterday.”
“How’s your tummy?”
“Kinda weird.”
Eden closed her eyes. She might as well take a rifle, throw the whiteboard up like skeet, and shoot it into smithereens.
And after she took Annelise’s temperature, she picked up the eraser and with one mighty swipe, the drawing of the tooth, the cat, the flowers became a big gray smudge.
None of that mattered when her baby was sick.
Two weeks later...
The Wasteland.
That’s what Gabe mordantly christened the period between the last time he talked to Eden to the next. Oh, sure, his schedule was full that entire time. Even lively. Meetings with the vets, softball games, various board meetings. Hearty laughter. Beer.
His big empty house.
His vast white ceiling.
