Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
There were adorable pictures on her Instagram of her with her boyfriend’s family, and Kay posted sweet ones of Hannah and his dad, and how much both his folks loved her.
“Did you just growl?” Kola asked his father last week.
“What? No,” he retorted defensively, stalking away from us.
She spent a great deal of time with Kayden and his family in their enormous eight-thousand-square-foot home. There was an indoor trampoline, ping-pong, darts, billiards, foosball, and they had a pool complete with slide and diving board in their backyard. Kayden also had a sister, a year younger than him, who Hannah was friends with. They had two golden retrievers and a cat named Millie who, Hannah reported, followed her around whenever she was over.
Kayden’s mother was a cardiologist, and his father was a financial planning and analysis manager.
“What even is that?” Sam snapped at me.
“I’m not sure, love.”
His scowl was dark, and Kola and I steered clear.
It was hard for him to let go, and me suggesting that this was how it was going to be someday when she got married, when both she and Kola shared their lives with other people, did not go over well.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, clipping his words.
“Well,” I began gently, “there will be holidays when they won’t be with us, right?”
“Why?”
I cleared my throat. “Well, honey, they’ll be with their partner’s family.”
He just glowered at me.
“It’s because you don’t have practice with this concept of sharing, because I’m an orphan.”
“You have Dane,” he groused at me.
“Yes, but Dane’s an orphan too. So we both go with our partners’ families for most of the holidays. And the holidays where we don’t, you can still have your folks over here, or we take your folks with us and go to Dane’s, or we all convene at Aaron and Duncan’s.”
“They always have really good food.”
“Well, I would hope so, since it’s catered.”
He gave me a tip of his head, like maybe.
“But now, perhaps on Christmas, after we do our thing in the morning, after we go see your folks, then Hannah might go over to Kay’s house, or go see a movie with him or something. Or he might come over here after his celebrations, but that’s how it works. There’s sharing, because you want your kids to have lots of people love them.”
He grunted.
“And you like Kayden,” I offered brightly. “He’s a football player, and you were a football player. You like the Bears, he likes the Bears…you have things in common.”
Another grunt.
“They were gushing about her when we met them on Zoom.”
He shrugged.
“And it must be nice for Hannah to have a break from being in quarantine here at home.”
“I guess,” he muttered, yielding nothing.
When she wanted to sleep overnight, Sam said no.
“But we let Kola stay over at Jake’s or Harper’s.”
“Yeah, but we’ve known their parents since they were in whatever grade together.”
“Which is true, but we trust Hannah, and we’ve met Kayden’s parents.”
He wasn’t convinced at first, but he did agree that if Hannah had been Kayden’s sister Mira’s friend, he would have allowed her to sleep over. Logic eventually prevailed, and even though I knew it went against every instinct he had, when he gave his daughter permission, I was very proud of him.
He had a lot to deal with at work too, and his days were turning into nights, which he didn’t love. But his whole team was on alert, with the issues in Chicago, and there was the question of what his office would do in the case of a federal-versus-state situation. So far, Sam had quietly supported his city and did what was best with the resources and personnel he had.
When Sam got home late Friday night, after eight, it was storming, and even though it was still warm outside, the rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was blowing, so I made chili and cornbread. Hannah was at her sleepover, so it was only me and Sam and Kola and Jake having dinner and preparing to play a serious game of Uno.
Jake was at our house because, as his mother railed on the phone, “Jory, if you don’t come pick up this boy right this second, I’m going to kill him!”
Sam, now sitting in sweats and a T-shirt that was stretched tight across his chest, shoulders, and biceps, took a sip of his beer and then squinted at Jake. “Tell me again.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Jake declared quickly.
“Oh no, I’m sure it’s not,” Sam concurred, lying through his teeth.
“It’s because, other than Harper an’ Kola, everyone I know is lame.”
Kola shook his head. “No,” he corrected his friend. “Not this time.”
Jake made a noise like a death rattle.
“Explain how it worked,” Sam asked him.
“It was just your standard zipline,” Jake answered gamely. “I got the cable from my dad’s work site when I was helping him last week.”