And her with Tad.
Could she be a normal mom? Give her kid a normal life?
And a normal woman? Surrender to the intense attraction she had for Tad Newberry?
“It’s his birthday and his mom said he could invite one friend and that’s me,” Ethan continued, taking an envelope out of the front pocket of his pack and handing it to her.
Wanting to put the car in gear and drive away, she took the envelope and pulled onto the street.
She’d met Jimmy Randolph’s parents a few times. The boys had participated in T-ball together the previous summer and James Randolph, Jimmy’s father, had helped coach the team.
The boys had never played together outside of school and sports, though. Ethan had never even been to Jimmy’s house.
“You’ve never spent the night away from home,” she said, still holding the sealed envelope with, she assumed, a birthday invitation inside, as she drove them toward home.
What did she do with this? Stay safe? Or take a chance?
“So?” Ethan’s defensive tone told her clearly what her son wanted her to do. She could coddle him, but only so much. He was growing into his own person. Would fight for the chance to live his life.
He was six and had no idea of the reality of their lives.
What should she do? She signaled a turn and made it around the corner.
“You’d have to follow Jimmy’s parents’ rules. Go to bed when they say. Get up when they say, even if it’s different from how we do it at home.”
“I know, Mom, I’m not dense.” The blue eyes peering over at her from behind those dark frames just took her breath away. God, how she loved him.
What should she do? There was a car slowing in front of her. She slowed, too.
“And if it sucks, I can call you and you can come get me,” he added. Practical. What she should have been.
“Don’t say sucks. You know I don’t like it.”
What should she do? What should she do?
Stop it, she told herself.
“I want to go, Mom.”
She knew what she had to do. What the rational part of her wanted to be able to do. “I’ll call Jimmy’s mom and work out the details,” she told her son. But she wasn’t thinking about Barbara Randolph as she turned into the driveway at home a few minutes later. She was thinking about Tad Newberry.
And wondering if, maybe, he’d be free to go on a date the next night.
She’d need some pretty stupendous distraction if she was going to survive this one—her first night ever without her son.
* * *
Tad stepped out of the shower Friday evening, having just come home from an extra workout at the gym—his third visit that day—to hear his phone ding an incoming text. Still dripping, he dried his hands, threw his towel around his neck and grabbed the phone. Very few people texted him anymore.
Recently, only one.
Miranda’s icon showed on his screen.
You free tomorrow night?
Funny how in an instant you could go from sore and irritable to...
Sure, he texted back. He wondered what she had in mind. Maybe invite him to the movies with her and Ethan? He would’ve been glad to go with them the previous weekend.