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“Let’s get some clothes on you.” If someone noticed, I would tell them he had an accident. There was only one remaining mom there anyway.
I pulled the backpack from my shoulders and slipped some overalls on him, no shirt. That would have to do.
“Back home now, okay? No shifting until we get home.”
“Sowwy,” he whispered as he crawled into my arms after we excited the tunnel. “Sowwy, Wivvy.”
Oh, my heart. “It’s not your fault, sweet man. Not your fault at all.”
Chapter Eleven
Sloan
Justice and I got home at around the same time, but the house was empty. I peeked in the kitchen and down the hall. Nothing.
“Where do you think they are?” he asked, returning from the bedroom. “I don’t see them—”
Laughter carried from the back of the house where the door to the porch and backyard was open. We followed the sound to see Livvy sitting in one of the chairs on the porch. She was sipping tea.
Koby, in contrast, was running around on the grass, chasing a ball. He was to all accounts having a wonderful time and looked like he’d had a good day. I let out a relieved breath that everything appeared to be just fine. Or at least I thought so until I sat in the chair next to hers and opened my mouth to speak.
She said nothing, didn’t even look at me, just lifted a hand to stop me. A bad feeling started in my gut, and I cast a glance at Justice. He nodded. We knew. I don’t even know why we were at all surprised. It had been just a matter of time, and I hadn’t seen any signs of chaos in the house, so it couldn’t have been too bad.
Except for the lying part. By omission.
Would she be mad enough to leave?
“I can explain,” I began, but Koby came charging up and threw his arms around me before I could go on. “Hi, Son. How was your day?”
“So fun. I pwayed with Wivvy all the time.”
“Did you have your nap?”
His head bobbed up and down. “I sweeped for a long time because tired.”
“You were tired? You must have been playing a lot.” I winked at Justice. “Did you vroom your cars?” He had a rug in his room patterned with a race track, and he loved it.
He shook his head, looking quite solemn.
“Did you play with your bear people?” He had a whole family of bears—not pandas because we hadn’t been able to find the right size—that went with a village of houses and streets and all sorts of things. He adored them.
“No bears.”
I was starting to get nervous. If they didn’t get out his favorite toys, things he used every day without fail, what did they do? “Did you read books.”
He nodded. “Wivvy read me books.”
My relief was short-lived. They’d been reading and playing in the yard. But nothing about those activities should have put Livvy into the state she was currently displaying. Had there been a tantrum, or maybe he’d refused to nap? No…if he had, he’d never be as cheerful as he was now. Or maybe the emotion he displayed was not cheer but smugness. At only three, our little cub had little ability to hide what he was feeling, but sometimes we didn’t read them correctly.
Koby was wearing only his “choo-choo train” shorts and sandals, a typical outfit for our panda baby on an afternoon in the yard, but he had his hands planted on his hips, chin lifted, and mischief sparkled in his eyes.
Justice studied him. “Dude, something you want to tell daddies?”
“Nuffin’.” His chin came up higher, craning his little neck. “I wanna tell nuffin’.”
Uh-oh.
I turned toward Livvy. “You didn’t ask him not to tell us anything, did you?”
