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“Did you get pinched? If you get too close, they’ll get ya.” I pretend that my hand is a crab’s claw and tickle his side.
He giggles. “That’s silly.”
I stand up and shake my head. Sarah appears, holding a pack of crayons in one hand.
“We also checked out the swing set, didn’t we? We put the swing set in the side yard just for you, buddy.” She ruffles Charlie’s already-disheveled hair. Then she winks at me. “Hopefully Charlie will get some cousins to play with eventually. If your brothers and sisters ever manage to fool people into marrying them.”
I know she’s only teasing, but I am still quite annoyed. “Rex probably has a few kids that he doesn’t know about,” I say, not trying to be helpful. “He’s your best shot at having a pile of grandkids.”
She smiles a little bit ruefully and shrugs. “We’ll see. Have you eaten?”
“Yes ma’am. I ate at Gem’s Diner.”
Charlie runs past her into La Villa Coralle’s main living room. Endless fluffy white couches beckon you to sit on them in this room, but that’s before you catch a look at the sea through the sliding glass doors that lead out onto the expansive marble patio.
I see that Charlie has made himself at home here, pushing back several pieces of the sectional couch to make room for a spread of half a dozen coloring books and ten different packs of crayons. He lies down on the hardwood and returns to coloring, so intent that the world might not as well even exist.
“Charlie, are you hungry?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He doesn’t even look up from his coloring book.
I smile and look at Sarah. “I brought lunch stuff. I’ll go grab him one of the pre-packaged meals and throw it in the microwave.”
Sarah stops me with a gesture. “I want to make him a fresh meal. He looks like he could stand to put on a little weight.”
“That’s really not necessary.” I turn and head toward the kitchen.
“Cole Alexander Bennett, you stop right there.”
I freeze and look back at her. She has her hip cocked and her arms folded across her chest. She pins me with a glare.
“My house, my kitchen, my rules. I’m asserting my grandmotherly rights. If I say I want to feed your child, you just say thank you, ma’am.”
I’m speechless for a moment. “Uhh… yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
Defiance gleams in Sarah’s eyes, and she gives my arm a squeeze as she passes me. “Good man.”
She vanishes toward the kitchen. I wander back toward my son and sit down on the hard floor beside him. He is now drawing on a stack of loose-leaf paper, and I reach over to wiggle a few of the drawings he’s already made out from the pile.
The first one is familiar. A two-story house of brick with a large green grass circle that I take to be the yard. I hold it up for him to see.
“Is this our house in Atlanta?”
Charlie scrunches his face up and nods, not taking his eyes off his work. I look at it again.
“Nice details. I like that you made the shutters blue like they are in real life.”
He purses his lips but does not respond.
I flip through the others. One is a fantastical scene featuring some stick figures with swords climbing a mountain. Another has a stick figure petting a ton of dogs. But it’s the third one that I can’t stop staring at.
It’s me, him, and his mom all holding hands. I can tell it’s Holly because she has red hair twisted up in a clip. And I’m wearing what looks like the world’s largest button-up shirt. Charlie drew himself in the middle, his dark hair a scribble of crayon that doesn’t look too far from reality, honestly.
But in the picture, his mom is scratched out with a green crayon in a hasty scrawl. He used the same green crayon to draw a slashing bold line through his and his mom’s hands.
I hold up the drawing. “Is this us?”
Charlie sighs and looks up, tossing his dark hair. “Yeah.”
