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She didn’t even have a chance to discuss details after Elle left. The normally snail-like Cyril vanished into the back, reappeared with his backpack, and slouched out of the shop before she had a chance to do more than smile reassuringly at Cash.
With a helpless shrug, she followed her son, pausing at the brand-new door. Cash looked shell-shocked and she wondered if he felt the same sense of distorted reality she did. “Let me know how the phone call goes?”
He stared at her wordlessly.
“Mom!” Cyril hovered by the van, rattling the handle impatiently. Without looking away from Cash, she unlocked it with her fob.
“I mean it. Call me, whatever time it is.” She wouldn’t be able to sleep until she knew what had happened. “We have to make plans.”
He nodded, the skin of his cheekbones tight and pale above the vibrancy of his beard. She took a step toward him, wanting to offer comfort, reassurance. Anything to take the brittle rigidness from his stance.
Her van horn honked angrily. She spun and narrowed a glare at Cyril. “I’m coming!” She turned back to Cash. “Talk later?”
He nodded again, a sharp short jerk of acknowledgment.
On the way home, she rehearsed what to say to her other children. Cyril remained morose and silent, which gave her no clues on how to approach the topic.
That night over lasagna, she told Felix, Delilah, and Abra about Cash. They knew about the break-in—there’d been no hiding Cyril’s forced labour—so she didn’t have to explain how she’d met him.
The girls appeared unconcerned by the news. After all, their father had already remarried and given them stepsiblings. Their mother dating was pretty low stress compared to that.
Felix, however, interrogated her throughout the meal. She answered as best she could, keeping closemouthed about Cash’s stint in prison. Her oldest son considered himself her protector and she didn’t want to prejudice him before they’d met.
She crawled into bed shortly after nine-thirty after the kids were settled in their rooms. In order from eldest to youngest, they would be studying, playing a video game, streaming TikTok, and sleeping.
This quiet time was her favourite for reading. Tonight, her attention kept drifting to the phone charging on her bedside table.
It was a few minutes past ten o’clock and her eyes were drooping with fatigue when it finally rang. She snatched it up so roughly the charging cord yanked out.
“Cash? How did it go?”
His voice was raw and scratchy, hoarse with hope. “She said yes. The birthday party is a go.”
Chapter Nine
This was a mistake.
Cash stood with Penta in an out-of-the-way corner of the noisy crowded room and wished he was anywhere else.
Well, maybe not jail, but anywhere other than that.
After her first delighted welcome, Elle had abandoned him for the numerous family and friends who had come to celebrate her sixteenth birthday. Linda was pretending he wasn’t there, while her father watched him with a forbidding expression, pointing a warning finger every time Cash accidentally caught his eye.
As if he could stop Cash from doing anything he wanted. The other man was thirty years older, six inches shorter, and fifty pounds heavier, all of it in his gut.
Cash pulled the brake on his whirling thoughts. If Linda knew he was contemplating a fist fight with her dad, she would kick him out, and he would deserve it. Slimy self-disgust coated his simmering frustration but did nothing to cool it.
“How are you holding up?” Penta’s voice was soft with concern, her touch on his arm warm and tender.
He twitched out of her reach. “Fine.”
He shouldn’t take out his resentment on her. She was acting exactly as he’d hoped—friendly, polite, and open. He kind of hated her for fitting in better than he did.
“I don’t think she realized what it would be like when she invited you.”
Elle was laughing with two kids a few years younger. He thought they were her cousins—Linda’s brother’s son and daughter—but since he and Penta hadn’t been introduced to anyone, he didn’t know for sure.
When they had arrived twenty minutes ago, Elle had dragged him in with a triumphant cry. “Hey, everyone! This is my dad!” She’d regarded him with shiny-eyed awe and he’d almost staggered under the weight. He couldn’t believe he was responsible for the joy in her face.
