“Bedtime,” I announced.
All three children objected at once.
“Five more minutes,” CJ said.
“One more chapter,” Bianca said.
“I have to finish my cave,” Billie said from beneath three cushions and a throw blanket.
“You’re all going to bed.”
Billie popped her head out. “What about cheesecake?”
“You already had plenty of cheesecake.”
“What about an overnight snack? What if I get hungry and my tummy needs more cheesecake?”
I stood, stretching my back. “Upstairs. Now.”
They groaned, but not with any real force. They were tired and warm. Happy in that loose, Friday-night way that made bedtime both impossible and overdue.
Billie reached her arms up. “Carry me.”
“You have legs.”
She frowned. “They’re closed for the night.”
CJ stepped beside her and gave me a look. “Mine might be closed too.”
Bianca tucked her book under her arm. “I suppose I have no choice but to participate in this.”
Five seconds later, I had Billie tucked under one arm, Bianca under the other, and CJ clinging to my back with his arms around my shoulders.
“Absolutely undignified,” Bianca muttered.
“You asked to be carried.”
“I did not. I accepted the inevitability.”
Billie giggled into my shirt. CJ’s chin bumped my shoulder as he laughed, and for a moment, the house didn’t feel empty around us.
I carried them up the stairs while pretending it was no effort at all, though halfway up, I questioned every late-night run I had ever taken and whether any of them had prepared me for hauling three children to bed.
“You’ll all be delivered to your rooms,” I said.
“Royal treatment,” CJ said.
“Basic parenting.”
I dropped Billie first, because she was the most likely to escape. She landed on her bed with a bounce, then immediately tried to show me a beetle she had “temporarily relocated” into a jewelry box.
Bianca took longer. She wanted water, then socks, then a different bookmark because the one in her book “felt wrong.” I found her the blue ribbon she liked and tucked her in, and she allowed me to kiss the top of her head with the strained tolerance of a girl who still wanted affection but wouldn’t admit it.
CJ was last.
His room was dim except for soft glow from the bedside lamp, the light catching the mess of books, notebooks, discarded hoodies, and the model ship he’d abandoned three weeks ago.
He climbed into bed, suddenly quieter than he’d been all night.
