Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,2
out for the job. The aroma—and she was interpreting that term in the loosest possible sense here—filled the room. She popped the glop into the microwave.
Bleep-blip-beep-boop-boop.
Sam looked up at her, his mouth open as if awestruck by her astounding number-punching panache.
It was complex and crazy and corny as all get-out, but at that moment Hannah’s whole being swelled with pride.
When her husband had broached the idea of providing a temporary home for Sam, Hannah had balked. The boy had been passed from family member to family member, his father denying any of them the chance of offering a permanent home through adoption. It sounded like a setup for heartbreak.
Sure, she’d wanted almost desperately to become a mother and, having “lost” her own mom as an infant, felt an instant affinity to any motherless child. But she knew nothing about little boys. The very thought of Sam had filled her with dread…and then she’d laid eyes on him.
Small for his age and scared, clutching a beat-up backpack in both hands, he’d arrived with a set of plastic airline wings on his shirt and a quiver in his lower lip. Suddenly she couldn’t imagine her life without him in it.
She hoped someday he would grow to trust, perhaps even love, her—if not as a mom then as a friend. It meant everything to her.
She brushed the fringe of brown hair out of his huge dark eyes and said, “It won’t be much longer before it’s ready. Do you want to call the boys in here now?”
He glanced over his shoulder to the living room with the plastic sheeting still covering the just-installed taupe-colored carpet.
Sam stubbed the toe of one shoe against the kickboard of the cabinet.
“Sam? I heard you talking to—” Kraft? Velveeta? “—your friend. Is there a problem?”
“Not really.” He twisted his body around as if to head off to the next room, then dragged his foot, literally, to keep himself from making the short trip. “I just wondered….”
“What, Sam? If there’s something bothering you, just let it out. I want you to feel like you can ask me anything.”
He turned and fixed his anxious gaze right on her. “Are we poor?”
“What?” She flashed back to try to recall if she and Payt had argued about money recently and if the child could have overheard. But since their move to Ohio, where Payton came onboard with an established pediatrics practice, money had not been an issue.
Well, not one worth bickering about, anyway. In fact, for the first time in their marriage, Hannah had had the financial freedom to be a full-time stay-at-home mom. Of course, up until having her baby and bringing Sam into the fold she hadn’t been any kind of mom, but the point still held.
“Honey, God has blessed us. Blessed us with health and a nice home and each other.” She wanted to pull him into a hug but, mindful of the other boys, settled for giving his shoulder a squeeze. “Even if we didn’t have a lot of money in the bank, ‘poor’ is not a word we would ever use to describe ourselves under any circumstances.”
He nodded, but his lips twitched as though he wanted to say more.
“You want to tell me where you got an idea like that?”
He scratched the tip of his nose. “Stilton’s mom.”
“Stilton’s mom?” Stilton! Of course! She stole a quick peek into the other room at the gangly boy who now had both arms wrapped around the greyhound’s graceful neck. “That’s Stilton?”
Hearing his name, the boy looked up and blinked at her from behind faux tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses.
She smiled and gave a stiff, awkward wave to the child. “Hi, Stilton. I really got a lot out of talking to your mom at the meeting the other day.”
“Uh, okay.” He nodded, then fixed his attention on the dog again, stroking the silky white spot on the animal’s broad chest.
“Hmm.” Hannah shook her head. Somehow she’d expected Stilton to be…different. Gorgeous and gifted. Maybe even slightly glowing. At least that’s what she had envisioned based on his mother’s descriptions of him at the parents’ meetings.
If Hannah were a superhero in the cartoon comic strip of her life, her archnemesis would be represented by one faux-tanned, French-manicured, fabulously coiffed package of plastic-surgeon’s-trophy-wife perfection—Stilton’s mom. The woman was…
“Stilton said she told him not to tease me about our not having any living room furniture because maybe we’re house poor, and if we are or not, it’s none of his business so don’t go pointing it out.”
Actually,