to admonish her until it occurred to me maybe she could help. She was a girl. All girls loved romance. Even pint-sized ones.
“Hey there, Laur-Monster, want to help us write a message to your aunt Sage?”
I hadn’t meant to phrase the question exactly like that, but it was true enough. If Sage agreed to be in my life, she would become Laurie’s aunt officially, though she’d held the role for some time in an unofficial capacity.
“Yes! Yay.” Laurie slapped her snowy mittens together and beamed, flashing her newly gap-toothed smile. “What is it s’posed to say?”
“I love you, Sage.” Saying it aloud made my chest tighten, and not from the cold. “Can you help us keep the letters we’ve already made clean? The snow keeps falling and filling them up and we have to make it so Sage can read the message from the window.”
“I can do it!” Laurie grabbed her tiny shovel and trotted over to the first word we had done, Sage’s name. Doing the curves on the S had presented a challenge, so we’d started with the hardest word first and were working backward.
Laurie shoveled for a moment or two, carefully cleaning out the newly accumulated snow from the letter S. Then she stopped and tilted her head. “But it’s getting dark.”
“I know. We have to work faster so—aw, fuck.” I jammed my shovel into the snow pack and threw up my hands. “I’ll put my American Express card in the swear jar, how’s that?”
“She’s right. My four-year-old thought of something we didn’t.” Seth wiped a hand over his snowy face, transferring even more of the flakes in his disgust. “These words aren’t going to last until morning.”
“No sh—sauce, Sherlock,” I corrected as Laurie eyed me closely. At this rate, she’d have her college tuition fully funded by the end of the night. “There’s only one solution,” I yelled as the wind gusted. “You have to call Ally and make her come home with Sage.”
“Oh, I do?” he yelled back. “I have to solve this?”
“Cabin,” I reminded him, and he threw over his shovel in disgust, then stomped inside to summon his wife.
I grinned triumphantly. I wasn’t going to let him forget my role in getting Ally back until we were old and in rocking chairs at the senior living home. Probably still arguing over checkers.
And I wondered why Sage and I were such a match? I’d been sparring with Seth since we were in diapers. Probably even before then, only we’d communicated with finger jabs in the womb.
He returned a few minutes later and resumed shoveling his letter into shape without a word.
I stared at him. “Well? What happened?”
“They’re on their way home. Work faster.”
Oh shit. Ask and ye shall receive.
By the end of the day, I’d either be with Sage, or I’d be bitter and most likely in the hospital for hypothermia.
21
Sage
“He said the baby was having violent diarrhea?”
“No. He said he was having violent diarrhea.”
“Eww. Ick. That’s kind of gross.”
“You’re telling me. I already have two kids to clean up after. If I have to clean up after my husband too, I give up.” Ally shuddered as we hurried across the parking lot to her SUV.
“Oh no. It’s not, like, an actual mess, is it? I mean, he managed to get it where it was supposed to go?” Now I was shuddering too. I did not need to come over to the house and see Seth in a state I could never unsee.
Once you were the poop king, there was no coming back from that.
“I don’t know. I’m assuming so. But with the kids, and if he’s sick…ugh.”
I tossed my shopping bags in back and rushed around to the front of the vehicle, bracing my hand on the side of the SUV so I didn’t slip. The wind was whipping around something fierce and the snow was piling up quick. “You know, maybe you should drop me off at home.” She slipped into the driver’s side as I did the same on the passenger’s side. “Not that I don’t want to help out if you need it, but you know, preggers.”
I was already using the pregnancy for an excuse for just about anything I didn’t want to do. By the time I actually gave birth, I’d probably be on self-imposed bedrest. I was just so freaking tired all the time. Plus, diarrhea was disgusting, and I already had morning sickness to contend with. If I had action downstairs too…