Page 105 of The Woman in the Warehouse

But Keith had been delighted to find out that our little girl was obsessed with everything to do with video games.

“Girl gamers are so cool,” Keith had declared. “I’m gonna teach you how to kick all the boys’ as—butts.”

That’s exactly what he’d been doing.

“Hey, bud,” Ant called to our other son who was engrossed in some ridiculous kids’ skit show on YouTube. “You ready to get going? We have to get to Grandma’s for dinner.”

“Dinner?” Keith asked, rushing out of his office as our little girl trash-talked some stranger on the game while she reached for her bright pink pony water bottle for a sip. “Can I come?” he asked.

“When has my mom ever not saved a spot for you?” Anthony asked as our other son got up off the couch and went in a frantic search for his shoes.

My appetite? Yeah, that was something all our kids had inherited. Our grocery bill was absolutely astronomical.

When they went through that big growth spurt in their tweens and teens, I was worried I might have to sell some of my gold bars just to keep them all fed.

Keith rushed back to lean over our little girl’s head, pulling one of her pink headphones off to tell her in a comically serious voice, “Finish him! We have to get to Grandma’s.”

We were all about to walk out of the door when Keith’s lady, Katie, came in wearing her black pantsuit, her belly round enough that the jacket had no hopes of closing around it.

“Where are we going?” she asked, looking at all of us.

“Dinner at Grandma’s,” Keith said, throwing an arm around her shoulders.

“Oh, thank God,” Katie said. “Think she made those pizza roll appetizers again?” she asked, making Anthony and I share a smile as we waited for the elevator.

“Mama,” our little girl said as we sat in the back of a taxi with her, Katie and Keith taking the other two with them.

“Yeah, baby?” I asked.

“I know what I want to do for my birthday,” she told us, tone very serious. She’d been giving it thought for over a month at this point, unable to decide on anything, despite the day approaching quickly.

“Oh yeah? Great. What is it?” I asked, figuring she’d want to rent out an arcade or something like that.

Nope.

Not our little girl.

“I wanna go on the ferry!”

Anthony and my gaze met over her head, both our minds flashing to the last night we’d taken that ferry.

It practically felt like a lifetime ago now.

But the memories came back in vivid detail.

“That’s, ah, an interesting idea,” Anthony said. “We can do that,” he decided.

“It’s okay, Daddy,” she said, patting his leg. “I won’t let you fall over.”

The idea of our clumsy little girl trying to save her father from falling over was enough to make me have to turn toward the window to keep her from seeing me trying not to laugh.

I’d end up having to save the two of them.

“Thanks, baby,” Ant said, reaching behind her back to give my hair a playful tug for laughing as the taxi pulled up to Anthony’s mom’s house.

“There’s my girl!” my mom greeted our little girl who rushed to her, arms outstretched.

“You okay?” Ant asked as I stood there, watching Keith and Katie take our sons inside where Ant’s mom was waiting with hugs and kisses the boys pretended they didn’t feel too old for, and my mom listened to our girl chatter about the ferry as she walked up the steps.

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