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The breath she’d been holding came out on a shaky exhale.She concentrated, trying to force a lightness she didn’t feel into her voice as she glanced at her son with an exaggerated eyebrow lift. “I’m cranky because someone woke up before six and wanted to play outside.”
“It was raining.” Nathan practically whined the response, as if any rational person would prefer splashing around in muddy driveway puddles to sleep.
Harris laughed. “And that’s good?”
Nathan smiled back. “Yes!”
“Interesting you didn’t know about the family’s early morning activities.” Josh put down his wineglass and reached for another dinner roll as he glanced at Harris. “Where were you?”
Mindless conversation. She could do this. “He was still asleep.”
“Story of your life. Right, Elisa?” Josh leaned in close to Nathan as if they were sharing an uncle-nephew joke.
She tried to keep her expression neutral but feared it came off more like a grimace. “Something like that.”
“Uh, nothing like that, actually,” Harris joked. He gave her hand a squeeze before picking up his fork and heading back in for another piece of steak.
When would this dinner from hell end? She couldn’t force down another bite. Hoping Josh would choke didn’t seem to be working either.
While she was forcing things, she forced a smile, this one for Harris. He was the hardest worker she knew. He’d built a practice and opened up not one but two locations of his emergency vet hospital in just a few years, way ahead of schedule.
It wasn’t Harris’s fault his brother was a psychopath.
“Okay, but . . .” Nathan stopped to chew and swallow when his father sent himthatlook. As soon as the chicken cleared his throat he was shifting around in his chair, practically bouncing with excitement. His gaze flipped to Josh. “Wanna watch a movie with me tomorrow night?Doolittle?”
“Again?” Harris cringed but Nathan was too busy staring at his uncle to notice.
No, no, no. She didn’t want Josh in her house, at her table, or near her son any more than necessary to keep family calm.
Before she could invent a lame excuse, Josh shook his head. “Any other time, yes, but I have to take a pass on tomorrow.” When Nathan’s face dropped, Josh squeezed his shoulder. “Later, during the weekend. Okay?”
Nathan shrugged. “Fine.”
“You’ll survive a Friday night with just your boring parents for company,” Harris said in his most convincing dad voice.
Nathan dropped one leg until his foot inched toward the floor, suggesting he was ready to move to the next thing on his agenda. “May I be excused?” he asked as he stared at his tablet on the kitchen counter. The one loaded with his video games he was allowed to play after dinner.
Harris nodded. “Take your plate to the sink and you can go.”
Nathan jumped down, dropping a nugget on the floor as he went. He whipped around his chair. Knocked into it. Basically made as much noise and as much of a scene as possible.
“No running in the house!” The same words she spent half her life shouting ever since Nathan learned to walk.
The adults watched Nathan set the plate on the very edgeof the counter, just far in enough not to immediately fall. Then he was off. Made a beeline for the tablet, grabbed it, and hummed his way into the small television room off the kitchen.
Josh laughed as he followed the scene then his smile fell as he turned back to the table. “Speaking of tomorrow...”
“Were we?” Harris asked in his usual joking manner as he continued eating his dinner.
“I want to explain why I can’t come over and—”
“It’s fine,” Elisa rushed out. Better than fine. Whatever his conflict was it saved her hours of panicked pacing as she tried to think of a way out of the visit. “Nathan can go one night without seeing you.”
Something about the way she said the phrase made Harris glance at her.
Josh plowed ahead. “I have a date.”
The scrambling fight for the right words stopped in Elisa’s brain. She went from a mental frenzy of wanting Josh out of her house to blank. And it wasn’t just her. Harris’s stunned expression mirrored the confusion running through her.
