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“You will always have your mother, but I’ll be your step-mother.” I try to make it sound cool and fun.
“Oh.” Her eyebrows go up like she’s wondering if any of her friends have a step-mother.
“Can you give us a hug? Sophie, I’m sorry if you’re mad or if you’re upset. We didn’t want you to find out this way.”
She throws her arms around my neck, then snaps back to caress J.P.’s bald little head. “Why are we really in here? It wasn’t even raining.”
“I’m not sure,” I answer, thinking of something better, but she’s breathing heavy all of a sudden.
Looking around and spotting blankets, I make up a quick pile on the floor and place J.P. in the center. He dozed off, but he’ll need to eat in about two hours.
Eat…
Did any of that food that got delivered have nuts in it?
“Sophie, what else did you eat besides the stuffing?”
Rubbing the side of her face, she says, “I tasted some of the cobbler.”
“What flavor?” I run my fingers across her face, and notice her lips are swelling.
“Blueberry.”
I’d heard of blueberry allergies, but Darragh only mentioned a sensitivity to nuts. Did my issues and taking care of the baby compromise Darragh’s meticulous policing of Sophie’s food intake when he ordered the dinner for tonight?
“How is your breathing?”
“Um.” Her nostrils flare as she clears her throat.
“Sophie, think back to the paint party.” We hadn’t talked about her attack since that day. “You ate a cupcake and started feeling sick.”
“I thought it was mine.” Her chest expands, as she whines.
“We know that, sweetie,” I say, stroking her forehead to calm her down. “It wasn’t your fault. But do you feel now what you felt then?”
Her lashes flutter, and she looks down at J.P. It dawns on me in the most profound way that my son might also have this issue depending on where the nut sensitivity gene came from. Darragh or Ginnifer.
“Sophie?”
“A… A little. But I’m okay. I want to be okay.”
I discreetly reach for the EpiPen case. I don’t want her to worry. But if she gets sick and sees me coming at her with a needle, I want her to trust me. “Hey, did you know I gave you your EpiPen shot that day?”
“You did?”
“That makes me kind of an expert. You can trust me. Can you check on J.P., sweetie?” I reach into the cubby for the zipped-up kit.
Only… There’s no pen inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Darragh
Tap, tap, tap.
I go through each camera angle of my security system on my phone when a horrific thought slaps me in the face.
If Balor logged into this remotely, even with the passwords, that means someone else can hack the system and look at exactly what I see.
