The Path to Sunshine Cove (Cape Sanctuary #2) - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,5
them to see them gobbled up by little mouths that wouldn’t appreciate the nuances of flavor.
“Grace, could you please grab a granola bar for Ava and Silas?”
“I don’t want a granola bar,” Ava whined. “I want one of those. It’s purple and pretty.”
Ava pointed to the tray of perfectly decorated almond sugar cookies Rachel had been working on all afternoon.
“I told you when we were making them. These are for my book group tonight. I made some for only us and you can have one after dinner.”
“But they’re so pretty. Why can’t I have one now?” Ava whined.
“Because you can’t.” It was the worst sort of maternal response but she was just about out of patience for the day.
Undeterred, Silas reached on tiptoe for one but still couldn’t reach. If she hadn’t been focused on the photographs for her blog and social media properties, she might have seen the telltale signs of a tantrum. The jutted-out lip, the rising color, the obstinate jawline.
He grunted and tried to reach.
“See? Silas wants one, too,” Ava informed her. “Daddy would give us one.”
“I’m sure he would. But Daddy’s not here right now, is he?”
All right. She was heading straight into full-on bitch mode. It wasn’t Ava’s fault that her father seemed to be spending more and more time working these days.
She wanted to think it was simply an uptick in the construction business that had him leaving before sunrise and coming home after dark most days. As the owner of a successful roofing company, her husband had plenty of obligations outside the home—which meant most of the work inside the home fell on Rachel’s shoulders.
She hoped work was the reason Cody was gone so much, anyway, and that he wasn’t trying to avoid the hard realities of home life, especially their son’s early diagnosis of autism two months earlier.
When Cody was home, he seemed distracted, as if he couldn’t wait to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
She shoved down the low, constant thrum of anxiety to focus on her children. “A granola bar or nothing,” she told Ava. “Those are your choices until dinner. Silas, you can’t do that. No. Play with your car on the floor.”
As she might have expected, her son ignored her. She might as well have been talking to one of those flower-shaped cookies. He continued driving his car along the edge of the island.
At least he hadn’t had a meltdown over not getting a cookie. Rachel decided to focus on the positive as she took a few more shots of two cookies on a piece of antique china she had picked up at a thrift store.
This would make a beautiful post about spring baking when she shared the recipe on her blog, she thought.
Her phone rang with Cody’s distinctive ringtone, a jazz song they had danced to on an amazing trip to Sonoma for their anniversary some years back.
She was quite certain she had conceived Silas on that trip.
Even though doctors had told her it wasn’t the case, Rachel still wondered whether Silas’s autism was a result of all the wine she had consumed, in between magical afternoons spent making love.
“Hi,” she said breathlessly. Oh, how she missed sex. It had been weeks, for one reason or another.
“Hey, babe. I’m going to be late again. I’m sorry. I’m down two guys and the job is taking longer than we thought. It’s supposed to rain overnight and we can’t leave the Tanners with a hole in their roof.”
“Again? You promised you would be home on time tonight! I have my book group, remember?”
Rachel had been holding on desperately to the idea of a little adult conversation. Okay, most of the time her group rarely actually managed to make time to discuss the book. It was more about drinking wine and having a discussion that didn’t involve her wiping someone’s nose or telling someone else to stop jumping on the furniture.
“Oh, damn. I completely forgot about book group. Maybe my mom could sit with the kids until I get home.”
He could remember the batting average of every single hitter on the Giants lineup but didn’t bother to remember the one night a month when she could pretend to have a life outside her kids.
“Your mom will be at the book group. I can’t ask her to miss it to tend my kids. So will your sister and Jan.”
Those were about the only people she dared entrust with all three of her children, especially considering Silas’s behavior issues.