“Hi, honey.”
“Morning, Mom.” Looking over, he waved. “Morning, Coen.”
“Morning, bud,” Coen’s deep voice trickled into the room, and something about this scene felt so right to me that I had to sit there trying to swallow past the tightness in my throat before I could speak again.
“Time to get up and get ready for school, okay?”
Rolling out of bed, he shuffled over to Coen and grabbed his hand as he tried to pull him out of the room. “I want cereal, please.”
Coen looked over at me and smiled before allowing Parker to pull him into the hall. His voice trailing off as he said, “Whatever you want.”
I just sat there as I tried to comprehend what had happened. It had been incredibly anticlimactic for how nervous Coen and I had been, but it had also been beyond perfect. With a smile on my face, I stood and walked out of Parker’s room to join them in the kitchen, where Coen was getting Parker’s breakfast.
Chapter Ten
Reagan—October 27, 2010
I FLASHED A grateful smile at the secretary as she came in to hand me a stack of papers, and continued talking to one of our bigger clients.
“I just sent it over to you; let me know what you think.”
As I waited for his response, I flipped quickly through the requests before putting them in the inbox.
“Now, it’s a little different from the style you usually go for, but I really think—”
“Love it!”
I smiled and tried to contain the relief in my voice. “I’m glad.”
“I love this modern twist you put on it.”
“All right, well, make sure it all looks good, and if it does, I’ll put the order in.”
“No changes, I’m happy with this one, whoever had the balls to change it up on me deserves a raise.”
Smiling to myself, I wished my boss could’ve been in here for this call. “Okay. I’ll put the order in right . . . now.” I trailed off as my cell phone vibrated with Parker’s school on the ID. Fear gripped at my chest and I hurried to get off the phone. “Have a good rest of your week, Mr. Walton.”
“Bye now.”
“Hello?” I answered my cell as I hung up the office phone, and held my breath.
“Miss Hudson?”
“Yes.” Please, God, please let Parker just be in trouble.
“This is Assistant Principal Reese from Parker’s elementary school.”
“Hi, is everything okay?”
“Ma’am, we had to call an ambulance to take Parker to the hos—”
“What?!” I yelled into the phone and stood so fast my desk chair rolled back until it hit the wall.
“They just loaded him up and left a few minutes ago.”
I gripped at my head and spun in a tight circle as I tried to think of what I had to do. “Aren’t you—aren’t you supposed to call me before you just take him to the hospital?”
“He fell off the gym set during the lunch recess and was knocked unconscious, he still hadn’t woken up by the time the ambulance left.”