Hell, yeah, we left him with his first baby poop.
We’d only just gotten into the car when we heard him yell, “I’m going to kill you. Dear Jesus, what do you feed this kid?” The last word was choked out around a gag, making us laugh even harder.
“Let’s just go for a five minute drive,” Jerry suggested as he sent off a text. “I’ve told Tana to stay in the bathroom. The kid’s going to have to change a diaper at some point, so he may as well learn how now. It’ll also teach him for being a shit head when he was little.”
“You’re still holding a grudge after all this time? He’s what, twenty-six?”
“Almost twenty-seven, and yes. In twenty-five years, you’ll find yourself getting revenge on Toby, trust me. Oh, you don’t think you will, but every parent at some point sees the karma happening for stuff their kids did when they were younger.”
Snorting, I reversed out of where I’d parked and took him for a drive around the ranch. During it, he mentioned Tana had a leak in her roof, so I called one of the hands, Tyler, to take a look at it. He promised he would as soon as he got back in the morning.
“Eh, don’t worry about it,” Jerry muttered, ducking his head to look up at the sky through the windshield. “Doesn’t look like you’ve got rain coming, so she’ll be okay for another night.”
Glancing at the dash, I smirked when I saw that we’d been away for twenty-five minutes. “Think we’ve been away long enough?”
“Yup. Tana texted me ten minutes ago to say Croix was hammering on the bathroom door, begging her to change the kid’s diaper, but she didn’t give in. Last I heard, he was screaming and choking while he wiped Toby down.”
I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing harder than I had in a long time, and damn, it felt good. I didn’t even feel anxiety over someone else watching my kid because I trusted Tana implicitly to make sure he was okay. It had to be said, I also trusted her family because they were good people.
In fact, I felt happier and lighter than I had in a long time, and that feeling just grew once we got back to Tana’s house and found Croix in the kitchen, scrubbing his hands and glaring at us.
SIX
SANTANA
Even dragging ass after a nap, I managed to get my daily word count done before I fell asleep with Wrecker curled up beside me, his front leg flung over my waist.
I’m not sure if it was the exhaustion or having him there that made it happen, but I fell into a deep sleep and didn’t hear the thunder and lightning outside that the weather forecast hadn’t seen coming—at least, not that they’d told us. If they had, I’d have put the pots and bowls under the parts of the ceiling that I knew leaked.
Then again, if it hadn’t been for Wrecker, I likely would have slept through the new leak in the ceiling right above my bed. As it was, by the time I realized it was him scratching me and not the giant iguana in my dream, a large part of my bed and my left side was wet.
Feeling it and worrying one of us had peed ourselves, I jumped out of bed, making him bark and leap off the bed with me, just as a large chunk of the ceiling landed right where I’d been lying, and water poured onto the mattress. Another smaller chunk then fell, hitting me on the arm before it hit the ground next to my foot.
I’d like to say I sprung into action and did damage control, but my first reaction was to scream, “My laptop!” and pull it out from under the bed along with my notebook. Without both of them, I was screwed.
Once I had them in a garbage bag to keep them dry, I placed them carefully on the couch and went back into my bedroom. Out of instinct, I went to switch the overhead light on, then stopped when my finger was only an inch away from it.
What if I switched it on and it electrocuted me? I wasn’t sure if any of the wires had been damaged or know enough about shit like that if it’d explode or set the house on fire. They already winked on and off when it was raining or there was wind, did that mean anything?
Hearing a whimper, I glanced down at Wrecker, who was watching the water now dripping steadily onto my ruined bed. I wasn’t upset about it, I hated the thing. I’d bought it in a sale for two hundred dollars, mattress included, and it was the most uncomfortable and painful thing I’d ever slept on. I’d added four mattress toppers over the last seventeen months, and now instead of a three-inch thick mattress, I had seven inches and could still feel every damned spring digging into me. Ergo, its death wasn’t a tragedy.