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“You all were losing your mother. By the time I realized how deep the hole I’d dug myself was, it was too late.” Grandad grimaces.
“Grandad, I– I’m so sorry!” My eyes fill with tears. “You lost your daughter, and now you’re going to lose your house?”
He’s about to answer me when a voice cuts through our conversation like a sharp knife through dollar-store margarine.
“Aunt Sav!” Dexter’s holler comes from upstairs. “Aunt Sav, are you up?”
I glance at the clock on the wall as I rise. It’s only 4:30. Rushing to the staircase, I stage whisper. “Yes! Shh. Grandad and I are in the kitchen.”
Dex’s head of messy blond hair appears first, then his goofy grin, then the rest of his small body. He thumps down the stairs as silently as a marching band.
“Dex, quietly!” I whisper. Only then does he tiptoe on the last few steps. When he gets down to me, I look at his sleepy face and his superhero pajamas. Leaning down, I put my hands on my knees.
“What are you doing awake?” I ask in the softest voice I can conjure.
He does not pick up on that at all.
“I’m awake because Mom kicked me!” he almost shouts.
I pull him into the kitchen, where Grandad is already stirring hot cocoa in a saucepan over low heat. Grandad silently raises his hand and Dex charges at him, putting his entire five-year-old body into a forceful high-five.
“Easy, easy!” I chide my nephew. “Come sit at the table. Tell me why you weren’t sleeping in your own bed.”
“Aunt Saaaaaav.” He plops down in one of the chairs and rolls his eyes. “My bed is teeny tiny. It belongs to a wimp.”
I screw my face up. The rooms in our house are small and the ceilings are low. When the adults put their heads together last year to talk about how to make space for everyone, a lofted twin bed built over a double-sized mattress had seemed perfect. It let Birdie keep her adult mattress while allowing Dex his own space.
I sigh. “Your bed in your mom’s room is not doing the trick anymore, huh?”
“No.” His voice turns whiny. “I want my own room.”
I smile and pat his knee. “You will get my room as soon as I move out. It just requires patience.”
I swallow after this promise, wondering if it’s really fair to make it now that I know he won’t be staying here long with the house on the market.
Dex looks at me with a critical expression that he definitely got from his dad, Sean. He was an absolutely wild Irish hunk that Birdie met while reporting from Kabul. Birdie came home heartbroken and pregnant with Sean’s child… but without Sean.
Dex currently has the same knitted brows as the ones seen on Sean in the picture of him that Birdie keeps on the refrigerator. It’s the only one she has. “You told me to be patient a thousand million years ago. I’ve been patient!”
He yells the last bit and Grandad shushes him. He brings over a steaming mug of cocoa as he does it.
“Here. Put this in your face and be quiet. Your mom needs to sleep.”
“Sorry,” Dex says. “I’m trying.”
“And I am trying to move so you can have my room. It’s just taking some time.”
Dex huffs and blows on his cocoa. “Thanks, Grandad,” he says begrudgingly. He slides his gaze to me. “What is the hold up?”
“Dex!” Grandad says, the pitch of his voice rising. “Apologize right now.”
“I said that bad.” Dexter frowns. “Sorry.”
I grin at him. “It’s okay. I’m just saving up money. It’s a painstaking process.”
Grandad sits down and glares at me. “You don’t have to move out if you don’t want to. You know my feelings on the matter. Dex can deal with the living arrangements for a bit longer.”
“No, I can’t,” Dex mutters into his mug.
