Piece of My Heart (Fostering Love 4)

“Well, that narrows it down,” my dad muttered.

“A gold one,” I said happily.

“Shit,” my dad said, laughing.

The back door opened just as my expression fell and I started to panic. My cousin Trevor walked in carrying a couple of bowls covered in tinfoil.

“The jeweler will help you,” my mom assured me before turning to Trev and taking the bowls from his hands. “It’s their job to help clueless men.”

“Jeweler?” Trev asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I’m getting married,” I announced, enjoying the dumbfounded look on his face as I went in for a hug.

“To who?” he asked, slapping my back a couple of times.

“Sarai.”

“Sarai?” Recognition dawned. “You mean the girl who doesn’t find you funny?”

Of course that would be what he remembered from a conversation we’d had right after I’d met Sarai.

“She thinks I’m hilarious,” I said, shoving him away good-naturedly.

“Only on your best days,” Sarai piped in, coming into the kitchen behind me.

“I am hilarious,” I replied, spinning toward her.

Her hair was up in a messy bun, and she was wearing a pair of leggings and an oversized sweater. She looked like she was about to spend a comfortable day with family.

“I’m the funny one in this couple,” she said, grinning as I leaned down to kiss her good morning.

“Humble, too,” Trev teased with a grin. “Hey, I’m Trevor, Alex’s cousin.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sarai said, stepping forward to shake his hand. “Is your family with you?”

“Nah, Morgan’s at home with the baby girl.”

“Are you going back to get them?” my mom asked, checking under the tinfoil on the bowls to see what was inside.

“Yeah.” Trev nodded. “We figured we’d let Etta sleep for as long as possible before we came over—cut down on any tantrums later, hopefully.”

“Good idea,” my dad said. “Why did we let Alex wake up?”

“Ha ha,” I muttered. “You’re all very funny.”

“See? Should have let him sleep longer.”

“I woke up on my own—” My mouth snapped shut as I realized that I was playing into my dad’s joke.

The group laughed.

“We’ll be back in about an hour, Auntie,” Trev said, kissing the top of my mom’s head as she went back to work on the food. “Let me know if you need me to make a last-minute run to the store for anything.”

“If I need something, I’ll send Alex,” my mom replied, grinning. “Distraction is a good remedy for tantrums.”

“You’re not amusing,” I said to my mom as Trev left.

“Aw,” Sarai said, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Does someone need a nap?”

“Are you napping with me?” I asked, winking at her.

“Ew, quit it,” she said, shoving me away.

“Why?” I asked, winking again. “What’s wrong?”

“Stop doing that.”

“Mom,” I said, turning my head toward my parents. “Sarai thinks it’s creepy when I wink.”

“She what?” Mom asked in confusion.

“Not just you,” Sarai clarified. “It’s creepy when anyone winks.”

“You’re the only person who thinks that,” I said, winking again.

“I can’t take you seriously when you do that,” she said with a small laugh. She moved past me, farther into the kitchen. “Do you two need any help?”

“If you could get Alex out of the way, that would be great,” my dad answered. Then he winked. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever laughed harder in my life.

* * *

“It’s gorgeous,” Sarai said later as I led her through the trees behind my parents’ house. “But it’s really cold and wet out here.”

“Just a little further,” I promised.

We were nearly at my favorite place on the property. An old fort that Kate, Bram, and I had built one summer when we’d been too old to hang out inside bothering our mom and too young to go anywhere on our own.

My brother and sister remembered the old place fondly, but they didn’t seem to have the same connection to it that I did. To them, it was just a worn-down fort where we’d built fake fires and pretended that the world was at war as we hid from foreign invaders. To me, it was the place where I’d finally settled into my life with the Evans family. I’d spent hours in that tiny pocket of the property, constructing spears out of rocks and tree branches, using ferns to patch up Kate’s knees when she scraped them, and building a place where my brother could feel safe. We’d never brought other kids here. It had been an unspoken rule that the three of us had followed.

Sarai and I stepped between two trees that had begun to grow together far above our heads, and through some exceptionally wet ferns that soaked us to our knees, and then we were there.

There wasn’t much left of the fort. Some rotting boards were crudely nailed to a tree in a bad attempt at a ladder. There was an old metal lawn chair tipped on its side with the blue plastic seat mostly disintegrated. A few odds and ends that we’d pilfered from the house were scattered around.