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CHAPTER ONE
MEL
If there was anything Melody Clark hated more than cliché sayings, it was when they completely contradicted her current life status.
Case in point: If life gave her lemons, there was no amount of juice to be squeezed from the bitter rinds to make lemonade. That fruit had already been milked for all it’s worth. At this point, Mel’s fruit produced a slightly acidic water at best. Sometimes, if she was lucky, she could add enough sugar and produce something mildly resembling a drinkable beverage.
But things were turning around. Maybe. Hopefully.
Okay, it was doubtful.
Then again, maybe she shouldn’t be so cynical. She did, after all, have three healthy, beautiful children. She was lucky. At least that’s what people said. Some women desperately wanted children. Yet there she was with three—triplets to be exact. Say it with her. Trip-lets.
There was no doubt she had wanted her kids. And she loved them, she truly did. With her whole heart, in fact. Sometimes so much, she felt like bursting from the joy of it. But then there were times when the weight of raising them bore down on her shoulders so hard she thought her spine might crack.
Like when her husband—now ex-husband—left her just after they were born.
Yeah, remember that sour water? Feel free to cue the violins.
He lasted a whole afternoon before he bailed, leaving her sleep-deprived and alone. Talk about fun times. Try feeding three newborns at the butt-crack of dawn. Changing diapers was like a conveyor belt of Pampers. After one pooped, the other peed, then so on. It was an endless cycle of soiled diapers and Magic Genie. Oh, and when she couldn’t make rent only two months after said babies were born because that slime-ball left her, she had to find a new apartment. Moving from her modest but cozy apartment in Queens to a one-bedroom in Brooklyn with triplets was particularly fun—and even that was stretching her paper-thin budget to the max.
There were days her tiny apartment smelled like poop. Ones in which she went without breakfast because she gave the last of the cereal to the kids. Days she thought she couldn’t go on, and half the time for the first two years, she limped by in a zombie-like haze.
Work was a refuge compared to being by herself at home. Not that she didn’t love her kids. She did, deeply, but she was barely hanging on most days thanks to the stress of bills and sleep deprivation. The flexible schedule of a writer was the only reason she could even afford to stay in the city. That and help from her mother made city life affordable. Otherwise, paying for childcare for three babies, would’ve meant less money for rent. Even an apartment in Jersey would’ve been out of reach.
But last month, things changed. Her parents moved to Florida, taking her free childcare with them, and this month . . . Well, this month had proven to be more of the same bitter rind. Her kids had always been, shall we say, spirited? But lately, they had morphed from pink-cheeked cherubs into tiny little monsters. Whether it was a coincidence that it coincided with her father’s retirement and her parents’ subsequent move to Florida, she had no idea. All she knew was that this past month had been a nightmare. One of epic proportions. One she hoped she’d wake up from any second.
Mel inhaled as she approached her tiny flat and braced herself for what she would find. Already, she heard the telltale sound of shouting and the wild chants of her children. She half expected to open the door to all three of them swinging from the rafters and tying the sitter up with jump rope, while simultaneously downing a pint of Ben and Jerry’s—which Mel had been saving for Friday night once the kids were asleep. Or in a moment of desperation when she locked herself inside the bathroom for a short respite to gorge herself on the last of the Chunky Monkey.
She slid her key into the lock, reluctantly pushed open the door, and her eyes widened as she scanned the living room. Everything was white. Not the paint on the walls or the appliances or the old recliner in sitting in the corner of the room. No. Everything was covered in a thick white substance, while an oddly familiar scent lingered in the air.
Mel sniffed, tipping her head. Coconut. It smelled like coconut and something tropical.
April, her nanny, stomped into the living room from the hallway, red-faced and vibrating with anger when she glanced up and noticed Mel. The side of her hair looked like a pelican’s nest. The sandy locks were all matted and bunched into a tight knot. “You’re late,” she seethed.
Mel swallowed. Recognizing the thin ice she was on, she decided to tip-toe carefully so as not to crack it. “Um, April. What’s up? You’re looking a little . . . white.” She winced.
April narrowed her eyes to laser beams.
“Not that I care,” Mel rushed to add at her glare. “After all, I’ve been meaning to mop the floor, and these walls could use wiping down. Everything needs a good, deep cleaning, really, but I’m curious . . .” It was a lie. She hadn’t mopped in months, and with the rate her life was going, it’d be another century. Maybe once The Triple Threat went to college, she’d finally have squeaky clean floors.
She bit her lip as her gaze flickered to the nest on the back of April’s head. “What on earth happened to your hair?”
Anger oozed from April’s pores as her hands fisted by her side. Peter popped out from behind her, his blonde locks matted down with the thick white goo. His knobby knees and arms were coated with the substance. But more alarming than anything was the Pull-up he wo
re.
Mel’s brow furrowed as she pointed. “Why is he wearing a Pull-up? I thought he had been doing better?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” April spat. “What’s going on is that the little demons you call children put gum in my hair.”
Mel grimaced. She wished she could say she was surprised, but nothing fazed her at this point. Still, her gaze strayed to the side of April’s head. “Gum?”
“Yes. And while I was in the bathroom trying to pick it out, they got into the sunscreen, which they managed to rub into every single square inch of this place in record time.”
“Sunscreen?” Mel choked out. Apparently, she was only capable of speaking in single words.
Her eyes scanned the tiny apartment anew. It would take days to clean up this mess. It’d be easier to up and move. It wasn’t a half-bad idea. In fact, she was working on it. Kinda.
“I mean, who keeps that much sunscreen anyway?” April barked. “There had to be nearly a dozen bottles.”
“I found it at the Bargain Den in Jersey on sale. Two for one,” Mel said in the way of explanation. With three kids, you went through sunscreen by the gallon. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Only now did she recognize the error of her ways.
“Then, when I started freaking out over the sunscreen,” April continued, “Peter, here, had an accident.”
Mel’s gaze flicked to Peter and she groaned. “He’s been doing so well. I thought we were over the hump—”
“He had two, to be exact. And what do you mean he’s been doing better?” she shrieked. “He’s had an accident every day this week.”
“What?” Mel rocked back on her heels as if slapped. She had no idea. April hadn’t mentioned it, so she just assumed. . . What a crap-mom she was turning out to be.
She glanced around the room helplessly. “Where are Kinsley and Brady?”
April stomped back down the hallway to the bedroom Mel shared with her three offspring and waved her arm toward the bed. With trepidation, Mel peeked inside. The sight of her other two children bouncing up and down on her coveted down comforter frayed every last nerve she had. Thick white paste coated the pale blue duvet, and her pillows lay like deflated balloons, their feathers falling from the sky like rain.
Her stomach sunk. Those pillows had been a gift prior to the triplets, a luxury she could never afford now. Not on her own. Not unless she got the promotion at POPNEWZ she’d been praying for. The days of 1000 thread-count Egyptian Cotton sheets and two-hundred-dollar pillows were long gone. Sayonara comfort.
Gripping the roots of her hair, she turned to April. All she could think about was how amazing those pillows were. “Were you even watching them?” she snapped.
April flinched, then recovered quickly, her anger returning like a thunder strike in her blue eyes. Her jaw tightened, yet she opened her mouth to speak. Mel had no doubt it was to tell her just how much she loathed working for her when, as if on cue, Brady hopped off the bed and went to a heap of something Mel didn’t recognize on the floor and proudly lifted it up. “Look, Mommy, I’m Tarzan.”
