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)
“Remember the last time your mother was here, and she went through Steph’s underwear drawer and found all the kinky lingerie you like and then took you to confession?”
“Put Sam on the phone,” Chaz demanded. “Put him on the phone now.”
I was cackling as Sam glared at me, snatching my new iPhone 11 Pro Max in Midnight Green from me that he said I hadn’t needed at all, but that I told him was utterly necessary for life.
“Hey,” he said, grimacing before he closed one eye and listened. “Yes. Yes. I know. Yes. He was born like that. Oh I know. Believe me, I know.”
I chuckled as Sam shot me another look, and then I unzipped the bag. The mouth-watering aroma of homemade chile rellenos was like heaven. All I had to do was grill some corn on the cob, make guacamole, some enchilada sauce, and the quick, spicy coleslaw Sam loved and I’d have dinner. Crossing the room, I went to the foot of the stairs and yelled up for my kids.
Back in the kitchen, I started pulling things out of the refrigerator.
“You bellowed?” Kola said as he walked in.
“You’re hilarious today.”
“I’m hilarious every day,” he assured me before accepting the items I passed him from the fridge. “What are you making?”
“Your father brought home chile rellenos, so I’m making what goes with them.”
“Oh, that sounds good,” he said, going to the counter before I overloaded him.
Hannah and her friend Lucy from school appeared then, and I saw the forced smile my daughter was giving me from behind a pair of oversized sunglasses.
“We’re ready to be put to work,” she told me, and when I glanced at Lucy, her sweet little face was hopeful as she bit her lip.
“Why are you wearing those in the house?” I asked Hannah, my attention back on her.
“Because it’s a new look I’m trying out, and because Uncle Aaron just got them for me.”
“Oh? When?”
“Today.”
“Today? When did you see him today?”
“It was make-up day today at school after lunch,” she explained, “so I took Lucy with me to see him at his office.”
“And then you went shopping?”
“Yeah, but first we had to wait.”
“Okay. Why do you sound weird?”
“Well, we were sitting in that space right outside his office, you know? It’s not like the waiting area in the lobby, it’s more his special area,” she said, using air quotes. “So people know they’re next in to see him or whatever.”
“Okay.”
“And there was this one lady wearing a brown suit with a leopard-print blouse, sitting next to another lady in a black suit wearing a white shirt, and brown-suit lady says to black-suit lady, nice pin.”
“Pin?”
“Yeah, you know, like a brooch.”
“Did you ever get their names?” I asked hopefully.
“No,” she told me.
“Okay, sorry, go on.”
“So then black-suit lady goes, oh thank you, it’s a Takahashi, and you know, because I know, I kinda made a noise.”
“Why’d you make a noise?”
“Because she thought her pin was a Takahashi and it was so not a Takahashi.”
“Ah,” I said, wholly out of my depth.
“To be clear,” Lucy chimed in, “you didn’t kind of make a noise. You snorted.”
“You snorted?” I asked my daughter.
“Yeah,” she said, drawing out the word, her voice getting high and whiney. “I might have.”
I chuckled. “And then what happened?”
“Well, then the lady with the pin, black-suit lady, is all, excuse me,” she said, sounding nasally and snobbish, “do you have something to say?”
“Did she really sound like that?”
“Yes,” Lucy told me, backing Hannah up, her eyes widening. “She was totally pissed.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, then of course she’s all, you know what a Takahashi pin is? And of course I do,” she said arrogantly. “When Uncle Aaron had that silent auction to help fund the Green Team program last year, I did the jewelry part, remember?”
I remembered being utterly terrified that my daughter could tell the difference between onyx and black jade from just looking at it, and also being amazed when she stood up in front of an enormous room of people and welcomed everyone to the event before introducing Aaron. She had more poise in her little finger than I had in my entire body.
“I do,” I told her. “I remember.”
“Yeah, so I told her that even from where I was sitting, I could tell that it wasn’t a Takahashi because the eye was all black.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, on Takahashi bird pins, the eyes are done realistically. The whole bird, really. I mean, all of them have super intricate details, but added to that, there’s always a white dot in the eye, and hers didn’t have one. There was just, like, a big dark glob.”
“Right, okay, so you told her this and then what?”
“Well, then her and the other lady, they sort of calmed down, and she apologized for getting upset, and then she asked me if I would go over and sit by her and look at her pin.”