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“Okay? So…”
“But I told her I wanted to.”
Silence passes a beat. “That’s… kind of hot, to be honest.”
“Yeah?”
“What else did you say?”
“I told her I spent the entire night watching her sleep, getting lost in the memories of her.”
“Swoon. And then what?”
“Then I got scared and pretended like I hadn’t said a thing.”
Chloe laughs. “And how did she react?”
“I don’t know. She sort of looked scared.”
“Well…” She huffs out a breath. “Sometimes, it’s good to be scared, you know? It means she’s feeling something. And if you didn’t make her cry, that something is probably a good thing.”
“Maybe. At least now I’ve kicked, and it’s her turn to push.”
She laughs knowingly. “I hate to break it to you, Warden, but you’re not the one who kicked. She did when she sent you that letter. Right now, you’re doing the pushing. Just do me a favor, okay?”
“Anything.”
“Don’t push too hard.”
Chloe hangs up before I get a chance to respond, so I dump my phone on the counter and look over at Tommy. “You didn’t hear a word I just said. Got it?”
His eyes narrow in confusion. “But my ears are working.”
“I know they are. But I meant, like, don’t tell anyone what I said.”
He tilts his head, looking even more confused. “But that’s not what you said. You told me I didn’t hear a word you said, but I did hear them. All of them. You said you told Becca you wanted to kiss her.”
“I know that’s what I said, but that’s not what I meant.”
“Is this another one of those finger of peaches?”
With a smile, I say, “Exactly.”
Nodding slowly, Tommy’s eyes shift around the room. Then he shrugs and bites down on a spoonful of cereal. “Who was that angry man?” he asks, milk trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“That was Becca’s dad.”
“Why was he banging on the door like that?”
I take a sip of my coffee and shrug. “I have no idea, buddy. He probably couldn’t find Becca and got scared.”
“Like you, when you couldn’t find Ma’am last time?” Last time are his new favorite words—the ones he overuses to the point of wanting to scrub my ears clean with steel wool. They change every couple of months, thank God. Last month it was in your butt.
I lean my forearms on the counter. “Yeah. Like that.”
“When can I see Ma’am?”
“Soon.”
“Is she going to be deaded, like Pa?”
“No, bud.” I say quickly, shaking my head. I look him in the eyes—eyes refusing to meet mine. “What’s going on? What are you thinking?”
“Everyone who goes in that hospital leaves. Pa deaded, Becca left, and now Ma’am will, too.”
I try to come up with something to say to take away his fears, but nothing forms because I don’t want to lie just to give him false hope. I’d done enough online research in the past forty-eight hours to know that if it is what the doctors suspect, Ma’am will be leaving. Maybe not physically, but her mind won’t be the same, and Tommy loves her, understands her, at least well enough to recognize that she may not be the same woman we’ve always known and loved. “I go to the hospital all the time and nothing ever happens to me,” I tell him, half joking, half hoping it’ll erase his fears.
Tommy rolls his eyes, a goofy smile spreading across his lips. “That’s because you’re invisible, Daddy.”
“You mean invincible.”
“No. Invisible.”
“If I’m invisible, then how can you see me?”
His eyes narrow, his mind deep in thought. “Silly Daddy. That’s what I said. Invincible. Like Superman. You Superman, Daddy!”
“Helloooo,” Aunt Kim calls, poking her head through the front door.
“Hey, did you know that I was Superman?” I ask her.
She rolls her eyes just like Tommy did. “Well, duh,” she coos, making her way toward Tommy and ruffling his hair. “No broken bones can keep your daddy down.”
Tommy smiles up at her. “There was a big scary man at the door last time.”
“A big scary man?” Kim repeats, her eyes on mine.
“Later,” I mouth, then focus on Tommy. “That reminds me… we need to talk about something, bud,” I say, my voice stern.
