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“I already talked to Zack about it, and he really wants to stick to hockey, and soccer in the summer.”
“What?” He squinted at her. The light from the house molded his cheekbones and strong jaw, like a black-and-white ad for something rich and male—a high-tech watch or a luxury aftershave. “I know. He told me. I don’t care, I just want him to have fun.”
“Baseball’s all right too,” said a sleepy voice from the backseat. “It’s just kind of boring sometimes.”
Billy put a hand to his chest. “Ouch.”
“Not when you’re playing,” Zack added as he pulled himself into the space between the driver and passenger seats. “The boring parts are when the pitcher’s just standing there trying to make up his mind about what to do next.”
“Pitchers have to be strategic. You’ll appreciate it when you’re older.” Billy patted Zack’s head in a deliberately patronizing way. Billy and Zack already had a teasing vibe between them, a typical Cooper thing. Bean was different. Bean took everything to heart and felt things very passionately. They were all careful not to tease him too much. It was a youngest child thing.
Jenna was the youngest herself, but she and Annika had a completely different kind of relationship. Annika was a kind of mama-bear older sister, very protective. After the divorce, Annika had moved in with them so she could help take care of the boys.
Zack made a face at his father, then tried to climb into the front seat. “Is that food?”
“Are you telling me you’re actually hungry?” Jenna shook her head. “You ate an entire herd of lentils.”
Billy chuckled at her joke. One of the best things about their divorce was that they were still able to laugh together. They’d never lost their shared sense of humor even while everything else was falling apart.
“I’m hungry again,” Zack declared. “Can I have that roll?”
Billy handed over the buttered roll, which disappeared down Zack’s throat in about two bites.
“Not so fast,” she warned. “You might choke.”
He launched into a story about a kid at school who’d nearly choked on a peanut, but a teacher had done the Heimlich on him and saved his life. And another kid had tracked down the peanut after it shot across the room and made a shadowbox with it. “The Zombie Peanut’s Revenge,” she’d called it.
“She made up this whole story about how the peanut was actually a murderer who was cursed to take the form of a peanut, but he still wants to kill people.”
“Good Lord.” Billy nearly choked on his own, non-peanut food. “Is that girl okay? Do we need to talk to her parents?”
“She’s so cool.” Zack’s heartfelt tone made Jenna wonder about terrifying things like pre-teen crushes. “Can I have that drumstick?”
“Okay, that’s it.” Billy whisked the plate out of Zack’s reach. “How about you and I go into the house and join the rest of the family? There’s an entire turkey in there.”
“But only two drumsticks.”
“Fine.” He handed Zack the drumstick. “You can have it. But let’s go, we don’t want to get your mom’s car greasy.”
“I’ll stay with Bean,” Jenna told them as Zack jumped out of the car. “We’ll be in as soon as he wakes up.”
“Look forward to it.”
Billy’s intimate, slightly lowered voice made her head jerk up. What did he mean by that? Anything? Nothing? She remembered that he had something important to talk about.
“Should we just talk later about…that other thing?”
“What other thing?” Zack demanded. He never missed a beat, that kid. “Are we moving?”
“Moving? Of course we’re not moving. Why would you think that?”
“Because of Japan.”
“Japan?”
Her gaze flew to meet Billy’s. His guilty expression said it all.
“Hold on one fluffer-nutter minute.” She’d concocted that phrase a while back to take the place of the one that always wanted to slip out of her mouth. “What’s going on here?”
