Wait.
Taking the 202 to the 101, Lillie headed north toward Scottsdale and the little café that made breakfasts good enough to compel rich and famous people to wait for a table.
This thing with Jon. And Abraham. She wanted to help them because she knew she could. Because something about Abraham, the serious way he looked at her, as though he was trying to tell her something, haunted her.
But the time she was spending with them was nowhere near equal to the time that would be required to complete the list of jobs she was compiling.
She had to scale herself back. Way back.
Maybe just the ceiling fans. And the faucets.
Or just the ceiling fans.
And they could see about the faucets....
* * *
ABE WOKE JON up at s
ix. Laundry was done by seven. Two loads was all it took. One with jeans and pants, the other with the rest of their clothes.
Sitting down with his son for a bowl of nonsugared cereal with fresh bananas and a piece of toast at the little four-seater, faux butcher-block table that had come with the furnished, two-bedroom apartment he’d found for them, Jon checked the strap on Abe’s booster seat one more time and, reaching under the table, pulled it more firmly up to the table before placing Abe’s plastic bowl within sight, but not reach.
“Eat,” he said clearly, holding the big handled little spoon. “You’re hungry,” he said, leaning down just a bit so that his lips were right in Abe’s line of vision. “You want to eat,” he said, keeping his voice steady, kind. But firm, too. “Tell Daddy you want to eat.”
Abe grunted, looking at the bowl of cereal, and kicked Jon’s knee under the table. Repositioning himself so that his legs were together and angled away from the little boy, he leaned forward a little more. “You’re hungry,” he said again. “Tell Daddy you want eat.” And when Abe grunted again, he repeated the process a third time, putting more emphasis on the word eat each time.
Abe’s face puckered and Jon could see a bout of tears on the horizon. “I’m not giving in, Abraham.” He almost smiled. But this wasn’t a game. “It’s just you and me, buddy, and if you want to scream to he?Hades and back, you go ahead.” In his former life he’d used more colorful vocabulary. It came naturally to him. But he was working on not slipping up. “You want to eat. I understand that. I just need you to tell me.”
Slamming his hands on the table, Abraham started to cry. Jon moved the boy’s cereal bowl a little farther out of reach. He’d cleaned up enough spilled milk.
And he took hold of his son’s little hand, rubbing it lightly.
Abe stared at him.
“Your breakfast is here, son,” he explained slowly. “So is mine. And I’m hungry, too. I just need you to use your words. Tell Daddy you want to eat.”
With drops of tears wetting his lashes, Abe stared.
“Eeeeaaat,” Jon said again. Slowly.
“Eeeeeuh!” The word wasn’t offered gently at all.
Jon didn’t give a damn about that. He almost spilled the cereal himself in his haste to reward Abe’s milestone.
The boy was not stupid. He’d just had a father who’d been too good at reading his mind and not good enough at forcing him to do for himself.
* * *
“SO...WHAT DO you think?” Lillie stared back and forth between the two people she loved more than anything in the world—her stand-in parents, Jerry and Gayle Henderson, who’d taken her into their hearts long before they’d become her in-laws, and kept her there in spite of the divorce.
“I think you look happier than you have in a long time.” Gayle’s soft-spoken words settled a bit of the unease deep inside of Lillie.
She turned to Jerry. “What about you, Papa?” Not Dad. Or Daddy. Lillie couldn’t give another man that name. But neither could she call Jerry anything but a variation of it.
“I trust you, Lil. You’ll do the right thing.”
She’d told them about Jon and Abraham. Every Sunday morning over breakfast, she gave them a rundown of her week and they did the same. They were her family.