Glancing back at Grandpa, his cheeks were pink like he didn’t know why the hell he’d said that and was debating whether or not he regretted it.
“Ah, amen,” Sarah managed to get out, sounding pretty damn graceful and not like my gramps had just thanked baby Jesus of all people.
“That’s the last time I let you watch Talladega Nights,” I muttered under my breath just loud enough for my grandpa to hear.
And apparently Jonah too because he coughed, a lot.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grandpa replied before nudging the plate of pancakes closer to the middle of the island, avoiding eye contact. “Okay, let’s eat unless someone else wants to… pray or make another useless comment that I have no reference for.”
I laughed.
But it was Jonah beside me who cleared his throat, reached for the spatula, slid two pancakes onto it before transferring them over to my plate first, as he said, very quietly, very calmly, “I do have a question, were you praying to eight-pound, five-ounce baby Jesus or….”
I threw my head back and laughed a second before I slid off the stool and onto the floor.
It was a long, long time before I managed to start eating.
“So…,” I said a while later as I swallowed the last piece of tofu scramble. Beside me, Jonah mopped up the maple syrup he had left over with his final triangle of pancake. I hadn’t kept count, but I was pretty positive he’d eaten at least six of them. Grandpa Gus had mastered the whole grain pancake game a while ago. They were the shit—nutritious, with very little sugar and even a little banana and flaxseed thrown in. “I was going to take Mo to the park and sneak her onto a swing if I can pay some little kid to hop off for a few minutes. Do any of you want to come?”
Please God, please God, don’t let Sarah come….
“I’m meeting Allen for a matinee at noon,” Grandpa was the first one to answer as he wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“I promised Frank and Carl I’d watch the last day of a jiu-jitsu tournament,” Peter added after taking another sip of his coffee.
Please. Please. Please, please, please….
“My only plan was seeing the two of you. It’s my day off from conditioning,” Jonah replied, shooting me a much gentler smile than the rest he’d been shooting me after the baby Jesus incident had landed me on the floor and had Grandpa Gus scowling for an hour. “Mum? You can take the ute if you would rather do something else.”
Sarah, who had been pretty silent the entire breakfast, picking and choosing very specific questions and conversations—but maybe that was because she’d been too busy looking at Mo, handing her pieces of pancake and basically touching her every chance she got—chose that moment to look away from the messy baby who had eaten a record amount of soggy pancake. She blinked. And what I was pretty sure was dread poked at my chest as she said, “I could go for a walk.”
Shit.
I forced a smile onto my face that my grandfather and Peter could recognize from across the fucking galaxy, and I hoped that Jonah couldn’t but wasn’t totally convinced. It was one thing for his mom to be the one who was snappy at me, but it was another for me to be bitchy toward her.
Plus, she’d come today. So that had to be something, I guess.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my inner whine out of my tone. “Let me take my little monster upstairs and get her dressed, put some clothes on so I don’t moon anyone, and we can get going.”
“I can get her dressed,” the man at my side claimed.
I lifted a shoulder and nodded before shifting around in my seat and getting up. I grabbed my plate, Jonah’s, Grandpa’s, and Peter’s—Sarah had already rinsed hers and left it in the sink—stealing a smooch against the small head as I passed by, and rinsed those off too.
“Leave them in there, Len. I’ll set the dishwasher later. I found a couple recipes for Mo I wanted to try before I leave,” Grandpa said, still sounding annoyed his baby Jesus thing hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“What kind of recipes?” Sarah asked in a polite voice.
“Apples and chicken.”
That had me making a face. “In the same mush?”
Grandpa Gus shot me a look that said he hadn’t forgiven me yet and wasn’t going to. “Yes. Apples and chicken. I don’t remember