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Folsom offered up a smile from where she was at the counter, causing me to feel something akin to euphoria.
I hadn’t felt that in a while. Not since the day before she’d left, and I’d offered her a job.
“Mom is making broccoli,” JP curled her lip. “She told me yesterday that we were having it. I told her that broccoli was ridiculous, but she insisted that it would help me grow big and strong. Something that I would require if I ever had to run and hide.”
I felt my heart rate strangle a bit at her words.
“It’s my hope that with me around, you won’t ever have to run,” I told her.
She smiled at me. “It’s also redundant because my mom said that if I did have to run, I would run to you. But if you’re here, I guess I don’t have to.” She looked at her mom with calculation. “Which, if I don’t have to run very far, I think that also means that I shouldn’t have to eat that broccoli.”
I felt my insides chill at her words.
Not the hilariousness of her trying to get out of eating broccoli, but at the “run to you” comment. Had that been what Folsom had told her? If anything happened to her, that she was to run to me?
Even after I’d treated them both with such indifference?
Jesus, that was humbling.
“Julie Payne,” Folsom warned.
Damn, did her “mother knows best” tone really do it for me.
“Yes, Mama?” JP asked sweetly.
“That’s enough,” she ordered. “Now, go get your schoolwork done so I can cook this broccoli.”
JP sighed and left.
She took a seat toward the back of the bus, nearest the largest bed, and started working on her schoolwork, I assumed.
I watched her for a few long seconds before I said, “Run to me?”
Folsom didn’t try to play at not understanding what I asked.
Instead, she started cutting the broccoli up into small, bite-sized pieces while she waited for a pot on the stove to come to boiling.
“I didn’t know who else to send her to,” she admitted. “I could’ve easily sent her to Morr, but to be completely honest, there’s no telling when she’ll have her own kids. And I know that she’d definitely be torn. I mean,” she bit her lip. “JP comes with a freakin’ hit man on her tail. Plus, loads of headaches and heartache if she’s ever found. I felt like that might be too much responsibility for someone that’s just starting out with her husband.”
She did have a point. But me?
She must’ve read that on my face because she said, “You would protect her. You may have something against smart kids…but you’d protect her. And that’s all that I need in the end. Her life is worth more to me than her happiness.”
I felt like I was two inches tall when she said it like that. “I would never treat her poorly.”
“No,” she said. “But you might treat her a little oddly at first.” She frowned. “Though, after today, I think my worry about that is unfounded, too.”
I took a deep breath, blowing it out.
“I’m happy that I finally found you,” I admitted.
She looked down at her half-cut-up broccoli, then sighed. “I hate broccoli.”
I couldn’t suppress the grin that lit my face. “It’s not my favorite either. But I’m not going to complain. I’m just happy you let me inside.”
She finished cutting up the broccoli, then started to cut up the chicken that she’d unearthed from the refrigerator.
Once she had it seasoned well, she popped it into the air fryer, then started the broccoli in one pot and macaroni in another.
