Page 149 of Lost Trust

“Yep. You want to taste it?”

“I’d love to.”

She takes the seat on the other side of him, and I stand to make her a plate.

She watches me. “Where’s Marina?”

“She should be on her way. I guess her class ran later than she’d expected,” I say.

“So, you’ve been here with Ryder all evening?” she asks.

“We played outside mostly,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says, “we caught a fish.”

“You did?”

He nods as he pushes his empty plate away.

I set a loaded one in front of Ginger and look at him. “You wanna take a bath and get your pajamas on?”

He thinks about it for a minute. “No.”

“All right,” I say as I take his plate to the sink. “But if you smell like dead fish when your mom gets here, she ain’t gonna let us hang out while she works again.”

He gives me the look of a man who has just been betrayed by his closest friends.

Five minutes later, he’s in the tub, and while he splashes around, I clean up the mess I made.

“That was pretty slick thinking,” Ginger says as she watches me moving around the kitchen, loading dishes in the dishwasher and wiping down the counters.

I make Marina a plate and slide it into the oven on low to keep it warm. Then pack up the leftovers.

When I go to get Ryder dressed, I open his dresser drawers one by one.

Nothing.

“Where are your pajamas?”

“Mommy washed them.”

I find the dryer in the laundry room and open the door.

A pile of cooled clothes tumbles into my arms. I toss them in an empty basket and rummage through them, finding Ryder’s pajamas at the bottom.

Ginger helps me get him dressed and tucked under his covers, and while she reads him a bedtime story, I stand there, staring at the rest of the laundry.

Might as well.

I fold it.

A couple of tank tops, another kid’s pajama set, and then I pull out a piece of red silk.

I stare at the little red garment for half a second before carefully folding it and setting it on top of the pile.

I’m a gentleman.

Mostly.