Page 16 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

Chapter

Eight

Drink up, grinches.

—Coffee Cup

DIXIE

Past

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“Oh, boy,” I said as I looked into the room that John and Mark had been playing in.

My wife was out with her girlfriends, and she’d left me alone with the boys.

“What is it?” Stetson asked as he squeezed between the door and the wall. “Oh, shit.”

I watched as John threw the bottle of baby powder into the air, and it spun in an arc, showering his bed—one of the only remaining places that didn’t have white powder on it—with it.

“Your wife is going to kill you,” Silas called out from the end of the hallway, not needing to come any closer because of the plume of powder now creeping down the length of the hallway.

He walked out of the hallway, then came back moments later with the damn Polaroid.

Him and my wife, obsessed with that damn thing.

“Why?” I grumbled.

“Because your kids and your wife need these documents of proof that you survived the hell your children put you through,” he countered.

I snorted.

My kids were rotten.

But Mary spoiled them rotten, so there was no wonder.

Then again, I did as well.

As did my club brothers and their wives.

Since we were the only ones besides Stetson—who only had one so far—that had children, they treated them like club community kids. On any given day, I had at least two brothers at the house hanging out with my kids.

Silas was one of the ones that was here more than most, but I got the feeling that he was trying to find his way in life, and he was trying to do that while having something pure and kind to see and remind him of what he could have one day.

My head dropped to my chest as I thought about cleaning this up.

“I need a new vacuum,” I grumbled. “Mine broke last week. Mary was using it and it started smoking. I kept promising her I’d go get one but…”

That cost money.

And we had two kids and one more on the way.

The washer had broken last week.

The water heater was on the fritz.

Oh, and we had medical bills to pay soon.

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