“I don’t think I brought the diaper bag.” Baby looked closer to panic than Quinn had ever seen him.
“Dad keeps some emergency supplies in the glove compartment,” Ethan said. “He swears the poop monster always waits until it’s his turn to watch him and then makes five poopy diapers in a row.”
This was the most bizarre conversation Quinn had ever been a part of. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told Baby she wasn’t good with kids—the tiny one or the bigger ones. Of course, her interaction with them had been extremely limited. From the very beginning, Quinn and Peter had decided that neither of them was particularly suited for children. And thank goodness now.
Baby was still holding Thomas at arm’s length as he pushed her front door open with his hip and muttered as he headed back out to the Jeep, leaving her with Jess and Ethan.
“Where did you get all this wonderful stuff on the walls?” Jess asked, walking over to trail her fingers loving across the pattern in the living room.
“The wallpaper?” A child Jess’s age had probably never seen wallpaper before. At least, not paper this loud and colorful.
Jess nodded without looking away from the wall. “It’s paper that can go on walls? It’s so pretty.”
Ethan had wandered over to look at the makeshift end-table Quinn had made with books. He trailed his fingers up the spines with the same sort of awe that Jess was showing about the wallpaper.
She went over and crouched down beside him so she could be eye to eye with the boy. “Do you like to read, Ethan? These are mostly volumes of poems and stories written hundreds of years ago, but you’re welcome to borrow one if you think you might like it.”
The boy swallowed hard. “I’m really just learning how to read.”
Quinn frowned. She didn’t know much about kids, but she would’ve said Ethan was at least eight or nine years old. He should’ve learned to read way before now.
“I’m getting much better at it. My mom—Charlie. She’s not really my mom but...”
“She’s your mom in every way that matters. I understand,” Quinn said softly.
He nodded. “She’s a reading specialist. I’m dyslexic, and I couldn’t read for a long time.” He looked over at her. “All the letters got mixed up in my head, and it was hard for me to understand the words.”
“Yes, I could understand how that would make reading very hard. But your mom helped?”
He nodded and trailed his fingers up the book again. “Yes, taught me ways to train my mind to look at words. It’s kind of like a code.”
Increased neural activation. It was a common method of helping people with extreme dyslexia. Quinn wasn’t overly familiar with speech and language pathology, but she’d read some academic papers that had crossed over with her field of comparative literature.
“Sounds like your mom really knows what she’s doing.”
Ethan nodded solemnly. “I can read chapter books now. Not the same as Einstein over there.” He hooked a thumb toward Jess and looked so much like his uncle she had to smile. “She can read almost anything. But I’m still working at it. I hope someday to be able to read books as big as these.”
The child stood and she followed. “Well, these books aren’t necessarily meant to be read like chapter books. But I have no doubt that some of the modern chapter books that are just as thick as these you’ll be reading soon if you keep your mind to it.”
“Like The Giver or A Wrinkle in Time?”
“Ah, science fiction fan.”
“You like sci-fi?”
She grinned at him. “Sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, romance? I like it all.”
“So many good books. I want to be able to read them.”
She ruffled his hair then put her hand back down, afraid she might have insulted him. But he smiled at her. “You’re on your way,” she said.
“I’m going to tell my mom I want some of this wallpaper stuff!” Jess’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “Look at the sunflowers,” she squealed.
“You’ve created a monster,” Ethan said. “By the time she gets home tonight, she will have already researched all the different types of wallpaper and will begin her plan of attack for talking her mom and dad into letting her get some.”
“Isn’t she five?”
“Five going on forty,” Baby said from the door.
Quinn spun around. She had no idea how long he’d been there. Probably long enough to figure out she was a total