Mom smiles, cinching the tie to her white bathrobe.
“Thanks for this,” I mumble over a mouthful of leftover fried rice.
“You mean my lunch that you’re eating for breakfast?”
“Oops.” I grin.
“How was the market?”
“Good. I took Romeo with me. Put him in my little red wagon. Look.” I pull up the pictures on my phone. “He’s so stinkin’ cute. He also kept eating the food we were gathering. The vendors went crazy over him. And I got us lavender lemonade, and he tried to eat the sprig of lavender, but spit it out onto the leg of a lady passing us. That was a little embarrassing.”
She laughs. “I’m sure. Did Eli enjoy the market?”
“Oh.” I shake my head, shoveling in more food. “He didn’t go. He had an appointment. I was babysitting Roman for him. I also ran into Dr. Hathaway. She seemed a little confused or worried about me being there alone with Roman. When she tried to get him to go home with her, he was all, ‘No! I stay with Dorfee!’ Oh my god, it was just … crazy. I didn’t know what to do.”
“So did he finally go with her?”
“No. Because this police officer came over and basically asked me if ‘my son and I’ knew her. Like … can you imagine how horrified she must have been? I felt really bad for her. But I didn’t know what to do.”
“What did Eli say when you told him?”
I cringe. “I don’t think he was happy. He didn’t exactly know I was taking Romeo to the market with me. He kinda freaked out when he got home.”
“Dorothy Emmaline Mayhem, you took his child without asking?”
“No. I didn’t take his child. He begged me to watch Roman. No big deal. Like, his son was fine. Yes, he wasn’t in his jammies and his face was a little dirty, but he was safe and sleeping on the sofa. I mean … isn’t that what should be important to parents? That at the end of the day, their child is alive and safe at home? Like … he sees this bad shit all day. He sees kids die and parents grieve. But he freaks out about a trip to the farmer’s market that ended just fine. I didn’t know what to say or do. This morning while I was showering, I thought thank god he didn’t know about the car seat.”
“You didn’t use a car seat?”
“No. Of course I did.” I rinse off the fork and put it in the dishwasher. “I just couldn’t figure out the stupid harness system. It’s like it was too loose, and then I tried to tighten it and Romeo said it was too tight. And just when I thought I had shit figured out, I realized there was like … a strap with a metal part at the end that needed to go somewhere, but hell if I knew where. So I tried again, and all metal parts were stuck in some sort of latch place which is good, right? But things were too loose, so I found some duct tape in Eli’s garage, and I taped together the loose straps until I felt confident that everything was secure and tight.”
“Oh my god …” Mom covers her mouth. She laughs so hard she snorts. “Dorothy … oh my god. You didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t duct tape that man’s son to his seat.”
“Not Roman. I taped the straps. And it was a bitch to get that tape off there when we arrived at the market.”
She wipes tears from her eyes. “What about going back home? The tape couldn’t have been as sticky.”
I roll my eyes. “Duh, I took the whole roll with me.” I glance at my watch. “I need to brush my teeth and go.”
“I love you. I just really love you.” She continues to laugh.
“Yeah, yeah. Love you too.”
* * *
Elijah
“We need to talk.” Julie stands at the doorway to my office, dressed in a knee-length skirt, a white blouse revealing a bit of her new cleavage, black heels that make her legs look ten miles long, and a white lab coat. She’s also wearing that same look she wore the day she asked for a divorce.
I close my laptop and lean back in my desk chair. “So talk.”
She steps inside my office and shuts the door behind her before taking a seat on the other side of my desk. “I live with this guilt from leaving you. And when we got