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She ignored me and handed my son a snickerdoodle, even as Toby pouted. “Can’t we stay for dinner? Grandma makes the best food.”
“Nope. It’s a school night and you’ve got some makeup work to do from when you were sick.”
Toby groaned, but my mother patted his head. “Maybe next time, sweetie. I’ll make you some Chicken Yum-Yum next weekend!”
I appreciated the gesture, though I wished my mother would not offer to cook for him. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy home-cooked meals too. It was very tempting each time she invited us to stay. But I couldn’t continue to use my parents as a crutch. For months, I’d lived in their house and eaten their food and, frankly, exhausted their energy.
I’d been grieving for my marriage, and they’d been very patient with me. But after all the years I’d been away and all the ways I’d failed to support them, they owed me less than nothing. I had to learn to be the kind of parent Toby deserved, and the only way to do that was to figure it out on my own.
Easier said than done in a small town.
“I’ve got some recipes I can give you to try at home, Hunter,” another of my mother’s friends, Marilyn Lattimer, offered. “I make a nice chicken pot pie that Duke just loves.”
“Oh, Tom can’t get enough of my bourbon ham balls,” Lula added.
“Bourbon recipes might not be the best choice for a child, Lula.”
“Hogwash. The alcohol evaporates. It’s not going to get anyone drunk!”
“Well, it still doesn’t seem proper—”
The women fell into an all-out brawl over home cooking, and I motioned Toby to follow me to the laundry room to gather our clothes. He looked sort of shell-shocked. “Are they really mad?”
“Nah. They just feel very strongly about casseroles.” I ruffled his hair. “It’s why Grandma makes such good ones.”
“And why you don’t?” he asked glumly.
“Hey.” I crouched down to look him in the eye. “I know things aren’t perfect, but we’re rebuilding a life, right? We’ve got a house that’s going to be amazing when the repairs are done.”
“If you say so,” he said.
“I do,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. “And one day soon, I’m gonna make you the best dang casserole you’ve ever tasted. Grandma and her friends will give us all the recipes we could want, and then we’ll eat until our stomachs explode!”
I launched a tickle attack on Toby, making him laugh too hard to question me. When he was giggling, I could see the kid I’d raised with Holly, the easygoing one who’d enjoyed school and still believed his parents had the answers.
If only I knew how to bring him back for more than a few minutes at a time.
CHAPTER2
HUNTER
“We needto talk about our ‘Shrinkage’ before we wrap up,” Duke Lattimer said.
“Excuse me?”
“Our five-year strategic plan, ‘Stop Granville Shrinkage.’ It’s part of why we brought you on. We don’t usually worry about public relations.”
Duke screwed his face up as if public relations was the most cringey term he’d said there. Butshrinkage, really?
“Oh, right.” I snorted. “You know, when Tucker first sent me that plan and I read the name, I was sure you all were hazing me with a prank.”
“Why would it be a prank?” Duke looked baffled. “We’re serious about showing Granville is a grower.”
Oh boy.
I’d taken a part-time, temporary position as a marketing consultant with the city a few weeks ago when I realized that I couldn’t go back to the demanding field of corporate PR and manage this single-parent thing. I’d tried working for an ad agency in Riverton for a while but quickly realized I was falling into old patterns: missing dinners, working extra hours on the weekend, forgetting to go grocery shopping or keep up with laundry.
I was still trying to make up ground for the damage it had done to my relationship with Toby. After the upheaval he’d been through, he needed one parent he could trust.
