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Until now.
“Why don’t you take a shower and I’ll put the flowers in water and help you unpack?” She looked at the rest of the luggage. “You have more cases than Hannah.”
“I didn’t know what to pack for the girls, so I packed everything. And I packed some things for you, too, because I knew you didn’t bring anything with you. I imagined you ruining those sexy boots of yours walking through a muddy field.”
“Take a shower. I’ll make coffee and something to eat.” She vanished into the kitchen and through the window saw Posy and the girls wrapped up in coats and scarves, tramping through the field toward Socks.
She put the tulips in a vase and stood for a while, watching the children as they clambered over the gate and showered the ever-patient Socks with affection and fresh hay.
Turning away, she poured coffee into a mug and made a stack of buttered toast using the fresh loaf her mother had made the day before.
She piled it onto a tray and carried it upstairs.
The door to her bedroom was wide-open and there, sprawled across the bed, was Jason.
As she set the tray down on the nightstand, he stirred. “Beth?”
“I thought the plan was to take a shower before you had a rest?”
“I need a rest before I take a shower or there’s a strong chance I’ll drown. It hasn’t been officially confirmed, but I think I may already be dead.”
“I’m sorry you’re exhausted.”
“No, you’re not. This is exactly what you intended to happen.”
He looked so pathetic lying there it was hard not to smile.
“Aren’t you at least going to remove your shoes?”
His only response was a grunt, and this time she did smile. “Are you really that tired?”
“Tired?” He cracked open one eye. “Tired is how I feel after a day at work when I’ve battled commuters, my boss and a bunch of fussy clients. This isn’t that. This is so much more. I don’t have a word for it, but I know ‘tired’ sure as hell doesn’t cover it.”
Beth took pity on him and removed his shoes. “Which part did you find tiring?”
“All of it.” His eyes closed again. “There’s the eating, of course. That’s exhausting, because they eat all the time. Three meals a day, and snacks. No downtime. I might as well have been running a restaurant.”
“The downtime is between the meals and the snacks.”
“No, that was the time I was preparing meals and snacks, or running out to buy something they wanted that I’d forgotten to buy. Mommy always has it.” He opened his eyes again. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard those words this week? Are you smiling? Is that a smug smile, Bethany McBride Butler?”
“Maybe a little.” It was good to know he finally had more of an idea of her life. “You missed me a bit?”
“No. I missed you a lot. And not just because I have no idea how to make eggy bread the way you do. Melly said it was gloopy, whatever that means, and Ruby said it tasted funny. When they said ‘eggy bread,’ I assumed the ingredients were eggs and bread, but apparently you put magic in there, too.”
“Did you use cinnamon?”
“No, I did not use cinnamon. Where, in the words eggy bread does cinnamon appear?”
“I add cinnamon and a touch of sugar, which helps crisp the edges and stops it being ‘gloopy.’” She sat down on the bed next to him. “So the eggy bread was an issue. Anything else?”
“I took the wrong color tights to ballet.”
“I told you to—”
“You told me to take pink, I know, but I couldn’t find pink in the drawer, so I took black, because it was that or be late, and you told me not to be late. I chose what I thought was the lesser of the two sins, but apparently Melly can’t dance in black. Something happens to her legs and she can’t move unless her legs are pink. It’s a medical mystery. And don’t even talk to me about getting two kids out of the apartment on time every morning. It’s a surprise to me that you don’t show up at school in your nightwear.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were struggling? When I called, you immediately handed the phone to the girls. I thought you were so mad you didn’t want to talk to me.”
