“I’ll help you, Flower,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. “Looks like Diana’s not ready to stop playin’ with her toys yet.”

  “Mommy’s going to be home soon and I want to get the room clean,” Flora practically growled.

  “You know what?’ I asked, picking her up before she could completely lose her shit. “I actually just talked to your dad. He said they’re gonna be a little longer and he wants you to spend the night with me and Auntie Noel.”

  “Why?” Flora asked suspiciously.

  By the frown on her face my soothing adult voice was clearly unbelievable, so I went in the opposite direction. “How the hell would I know? Your dad doesn’t tell me shit.”

  Flora watched me for a moment. “That’s true,” she said with a sigh.

  “It’s all good, kid,” I assured her. “I think they’re comin’ home tomorrow.”

  “You said a bad word,” Ariel said, looking wide-eyed at me from across the room. “You said two bad words.”

  “Don’t repeat ’em,” I ordered.

  “I won’t,” she assured me, shaking her head.

  “I’m going to start the rice,” Noel called out. “About half an hour until dinner, girls.”

  “You hear that?” I glanced down at Diana to find her stuffing some kind of slimy toy into her mouth.

  I quickly put Flora back on her feet and dove for the two-year-old. “What is that?” I griped as I fished it out of her mouth.

  “That’s my slime slug,” Flora said, looking over my shoulder. “Ew, Diana. Now it’s all slobbery.”

  “That’s nasty, princess,” I told Diana as she scowled at me for taking her snack. “Don’t put shit in your mouth.”

  “You said another bad word!” Ariel announced.

  “You know what, honey?” I asked, turning toward her. “I say a lotta bad words. You’re probably gonna get real sick of havin’ to remind me when I do.”

  Ariel just looked at me.

  “Maybe we could have a signal,” I said, making her eyes brighten with interest. “You hear me say a bad word and you tap your cheek. That way we’ll both know I said ’em.”

  “Like this?” she asked, tapping her index finger against her cheek.

  “Just like that.”

  She stood there, waiting.

  “Shit,” I mumbled.

  She tapped her cheek.

  I winked back.

  “Come on, Diana,” I murmured, taking her with me as I got to my feet. “Let’s put you in the high chair while Mama makes some dinner, yeah?”

  “Want dinner,” she agreed, wrapping her arms around my neck like a monkey.

  Ariel and Flora immediately went back to cleaning up the toys, zeroing in on the little mess that Diana had surrounded herself with and hadn’t allowed them to touch.

  “Hey, baby,” Noel greeted from across the room as I carried Diana into view. “You getting hungry?”

  “I could eat,” I replied, laughing when her gaze shot to mine.

  “You’re so funny,” she replied dryly, taking the toddler from me.

  Noel’s eyes were red rimmed and her skin was blotchy around her cheeks, but I kept my mouth shut. If she’d wanted to talk to me about it, she wouldn’t have gone upstairs to cry and then come back down dry eyed pretending that it hadn’t happened.

  I was setting the table when a knock at the front door had Noel spinning to look at me.

  “Probably my mom,” I reminded her.

  My mom didn’t do anything quietly and it would’ve been too much to ask her to pick the bag up from the porch when she had a grandkid inside that she hadn’t seen in almost twenty-four hours.

  “Hey, son,” she greeted, grinning huge. “Just here for the bag.”

  “Uh-huh,” I murmured, waving her inside.

  “Gran!” Flora yelled, running hell-bent for leather toward us.

  “My girl!” Mom called back. “Are you having fun with Uncle Titus?”

  “He keeps sayin’ bad words,” Flora said, an evil smile on her little face. “And Ariel points it out every time.”

  “Oh, man,” my mom said consolingly. She glanced at me. “He better clean up his act.”

  “My act is just fine,” I replied dryly, punching in the alarm code to arm it again. “Flower’s a snitch.”

  “Snitches get stitches,” Flora sang.

  “Do not let your mother hear you say that,” my mom said with a snicker, carrying her toward the kitchen. “Something smells good!”

  “Hey Heather,” Noel greeted, dishing up the kids’ plates. Ariel had already parked herself at the table. I glanced over to see her watching my mom.

  “Hey, doll,” my mom greeted, putting Flora down. “What the heck did you make?”

  “Pork chops, gravy, broccoli and rice,” Noel answered as my mom rounded the kitchen table. “You hungry? We have plenty.”

  “Sure!”

  Mom wasn’t even looking at Ariel as she nonchalantly walked up behind her and snatched her out of her seat, making the little girl squeal.

  “You didn’t even come to say hello?” Mom teased with mock offense, tickling her. “What, am I old news now?”

  “You’re not old news,” Ariel yelled, squirming with laughter.

  “Oh good,” my mom said calmly, her tickling paused. “I expect you to come running if I show up. It keeps me young.”

  “Because that’s not creepy at all,” I said to Noel, making her giggle. Then louder, “You gonna build a house made outta candy next? Lure all the little children into your oven?”

  “Shut it,” my mom ordered, not bothering to look at me as she set Ariel back in her seat.

  “So, uh,” I looked at Ariel and then back to Noel.

  “Out with it,” she said, sliding her eyes toward me while she stirred the shit in the crockpot.

  “I may have said some swear words in front of the girls.”

  “May have?”

  “Did,” I confessed. “Absolutely did.”

  “Okay.”

  “Seriously? That’s it? Ariel gave me more shit than that.”

  Noel snickered. “Did she tell you when you’d said a bad word?”

  “Every time,” I whispered, throwing my hands up.

  “We finally had to tell her not to point out every time Otto swore,” Noel replied. “It was getting tedious.”

  “How did you get her to stop?”

  “Um,” she looked at me in confusion. “We told her to stop.”

  “Well, that’s easier than working out a signal,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Nothin’.”

  We watched as my mom chatted with the girls, asking them about how their day had gone and listening to their impressions of me when Flora had decided I needed to get a little closer to their mean-as-fuck chicken.

  “No, it was more like HYEE,” Flora said, making a weird honking noise.

  Ariel and Flora both made the noise, too, making my mom’s entire body shake with laughter.

  “Hey, you weren’t even there,” I scolded Diana jokingly.

  “I there!” she scowled.

  “She wasn’t,” I reminded Noel, who was watching the antics with an amused smile.

  I didn’t even mind that the little girls were making me sound like the biggest coward on the planet after catching a glimpse of that smile. The hollow look was finally gone from her eyes as the rice cooker dinged and she started plating the girls’ food.

  “You want me to bring these to the kids?” I asked, lifting the little plates so I could blow on them to cool them off.

  “Yeah, the big girls.” She nodded. “I need to cut Diana’s smaller.”

  “Good call,” I murmured. I was pretty sure I’d lost a few years off my life when I’d seen her choking at my parents’ house.

  “Isn’t this cozy,” my mom teased, moving around me as I brought the plates to the table.

  “Don’t start,” I ordered.

  “You two make a good team,” my mom practically sang.

  We sat down to dinner and thankfully my mom kept her crazy to a minimum. With each moment that passed, Noel grew more and more tense. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from checking the clock on the stove over and over. She was so focused trying not to look, that she didn’t even notice that I was watching her.

  “Okay, Gran needs to head out,” my mom announced once everyone was done and the kids had been cleaned up. “Come give me some hugs.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Noel said as I started clearing the table.

  “You cooked,” I reminded her.

  “It was the easiest dinner ever,” she argued.

  “Go hang with the kids or somethin’,” I ordered, waving her off.

  “I’ll let you know if I hear anything new,” my mom whispered to Noel, catching her before she’d left the kitchen.

  “I haven’t heard anything,” Noel whispered back. “We haven’t had a single call.”

  “I just talked to Otto an hour ago,” I pointed out.

  They both ignored me.

  “I hate the waiting,” my mom murmured, leaning in to give Noel a hug. “Not as much as actually giving birth, but it’s a close second.”

  Noel laughed.

  “Love you, son,” my mom said, hugging me from behind as I rinsed dishes. “Now, can someone come let me out of the house so I don’t set off all the bells and whistles?”

  “I can,” Noel said with a chuckle.

  They left the room and I made quick work of rinsing the dishes and loading the dishwasher. I’d done it a million times before and I didn’t even really have to think about it, which meant my mind had room to wander. Leave it to my mom to remind me of exactly what I’d been trying to ignore since I’d shown up that morning.

  Me and Noel did make a good team. It had been a strange day, and I knew she was worried about her sister, but we worked together well. Being with her and the kids was easy. A lot easier than I would’ve guessed. I loved my nieces and nephews, but after a couple of hours I was usually pretty ready to send them home with their parents or go home to my quiet house. I hadn’t felt like that all day. To be honest, the later it got, the more excited I was to get to see all the bedtime routine shit.

  “Your mom got the bag,” Noel announced, startling me as she came back in the kitchen. “And the girls are watching cartoons.”

  “That’s good.” I looked at her over my shoulder. She was grimacing, like she couldn’t stand not pitching in.

  “You wanna wipe down the table?” I asked with a laugh. “Haven’t got to that yet.”

  “Yes,” she said with a loud sigh.

  “You need to learn to put your feet up,” I told her as she went to work.

  “I’ll put my feet up when the girls are old enough to take care of themselves,” she retorted.

  “So in like twenty-five years?” I asked sarcastically. “Never mind, I take that back. Mick’s older than that. It doesn’t stop at twenty-five.”

  “It feels rude to just sit there while you clean,” she replied, ignoring my sarcasm.

  “I didn’t help you cook,” I pointed out.

  “It was my recipe,” she countered. “You didn’t know what to do.”

  “I coulda asked.”

  “Well, then, why didn’t you?” she asked in exasperation.

  My mouth opened and closed like a guppy. “I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t need your help,” she said dryly, letting me off the hook. “I like that your family has that system, that the people who cook don’t clean.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Not sure I’ll ever be able to do it,” she mused. “But it’s a nice thought.”

  “You don’t have to do everythin’ yourself anymore,” I reminded her quietly. “Let other people pitch in.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m living with my sister and her husband,” she whispered, her eyes wide. “Rent free, I might add. I’m letting other people pitch in too much.”

  “You know they don’t expect rent, right?” I asked.

  “Yes, I know that,” she huffed.

  “Dishes are done,” I announced. “See how easy that was to let me clean up?”

  She reached for a towel.

  “Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” I snapped, laughing. “I’ll dry those pans.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” She threw her hands up in exasperation.

  “Go hang with the girls,” I ordered. “Watch some cartoons.”

  “Pass,” she mumbled. “But I do need to check on Diana. They’re being pretty quiet in there.”

  The rest of the night went by quickly. The kids watched cartoons for a while before losing interest. After that, we used some sweet-ass tiles with little magnets in them to build towers taller than Diana. The two-year-old’s favorite part of the whole thing was slamming through them like Godzilla, knocking the towers to the ground. Ariel and Flora whined and complained every time she did it, making her crow with laughter, but they never tried to stop her. It was ridiculously wholesome.

  Noel sat on the couch, yarn and a little hook in her hands doing some kind of magic that left her with a square the size of a coaster. She must’ve made at least ten while we were sitting there, even though she kept having to stop what she was doing when one of the kids needed her attention.

  “I miss my mom,” Flora said eventually, leaning against me. I was actually surprised that it had taken her long to say something. We’d done a pretty good job keeping her distracted, but it was getting kind of late and all the kids were beginning to droop.

  “I bet,” I murmured, pulling her onto my lap. “I never liked staying away from Gran either.”

  “You didn’t?” Flora asked in surprise.

  “Nope.” I could feel Noel’s eyes on me, but I focused on Flora. “Ask Gran next time you see her. Every time I went anywhere for a sleepover, I’d call her and papa to come pick me up in the middle of the night.”

  “What’s a sleepover?” Ariel asked curiously.

  I looked at Noel in surprise, but she was helping Diana with a couple of tiles.

  “It’s when you go over to your friend’s house and stay the night.”

  “Oh,” Ariel said thoughtfully. “I don’t got any friends.”

  “Yes, you do,” Flora argued loyally.

  “Mama says I’ll have friends when I go to school.”

  “I’m your friend,” Flora announced stubbornly. “I’m your best friend. Even when you go to school.”

  “And I have sleepovers at your house,” Ariel said, like realization was dawning. She spun and headed toward Noel. “I’m having a sleepover at my friend’s house!” she announced proudly.

  “You’re a sweet kid, you know that?” I asked Flora, giving her a squeeze.

  “Mommy said that Ariel didn’t get to do the same stuff as me…before,” Flora replied, looking up at me. “So, we should be extra kind and include her.”

  “That’s good advice.” My voice was rough and I cleared my throat.

  “I like Ariel.” She shrugged. “She’s my best friend.”

  “She’s lucky to have a best friend like you.”

  “Who’s your best friend?”

  “Uncle Bas and Uncle Cian,” I replied. “And Auntie Myla.”

  “You can’t have three best friends.”

  “Says who?”

  “Me.”

  “Fine,” I replied, poking her in the side. “Then I guess it’s Auntie Myla.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “I think we can skip baths and teeth tonight,” Noel announced, stretching as she got to her feet. “Who’s with me?”

  “Yes,” Flora hissed happily.

  “We can?” Ariel asked in amazement, looking at her mom like she was some kind of angel.

  “It’s a special night,” she replied, smiling at Ariel. “A sleepover night.”

  The big girls cheered and Diana followed suit, even though I was pretty sure she had no idea why they were cheering.

  “You want me to help you get them upstairs?” I asked awkwardly. If I’d been helping Otto out I would’ve just followed them and pitched in where I could, but I didn’t want to invade Noel’s space. The house only had three bedrooms so she and the girls were all sharing a room. I’d be helping put the kids to bed in her bed, which changed the situation a bit.

  “I’ve got it,” she said, watching as the girls raced toward the stairs. “I have a feeling it’s going to be hard enough getting them to settle down already. Adding Uncle Titus to the mix might make it impossible.”

  “Alright,” I murmured, a little disappointed. “Night, princess,” I murmured to Diana.

  “Night,” she mumbled around her pacifier.

  While Noel was upstairs laying the girls down I got to work cleaning up the mess we’d made. It was incredible the amount of toys that kids could pull out when they were playing. I was pretty sure that they hadn’t even touched half of it beyond yanking it out of the toy basket. I wondered how much of it was Flora’s and how much belonged to Noel’s girls. I remembered the basket from when we’d picked Noel up, but from what I could tell all the toys had been combined in the past couple of weeks. There was no division in who played with what or where they were stored.

  When Noel finally made her way back downstairs, I was busy building a mansion with the magnetic tiles.

  “These things are cool as hell,” I said defensively as she dropped onto the couch with a sigh.

  “I didn’t say anything,” she replied.

  “You were thinkin’ it,” I grumbled.

  “I was thinking that Diana fell asleep really easily,” she said wryly. “And that means she’ll probably be awake three times before morning.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “It’s not so bad now that she’s sleeping with me,” Noel replied, picking up her yarn again. “I can just pop her binky back in and she falls back asleep.”

  “I thought only babies woke up at night.”

  “Ha!” she blurted. She hunched her shoulders and looked behind her, like she expected all three girls to come barreling back down the stairs. She shook her head and lowered her voice. “No, even Ariel wakes up still sometimes. She doesn’t really wake me anymore, though, unless she’s thirsty.”