Page 1 of Trouble Comes in Threes

Chapter One

“Aunt Rose! Wake up! How much longer?”

I was still half-asleep when a small hand gripped my shoulder and gave me a hard shake. “Aunt Rose!”

I hadn’t slept very well the night before—the baby was teething and had woken me up twice—so I struggled to open my eyes. Still, I knew my nephew Mikey was beyond excited to play his first soccer game. He’d been counting the days, and since the game was scheduled for six p.m., it was down to hours. I felt sorry for Mrs. McCallan, his first-grade teacher, who would surely be asked to take over countdown duties. “Ask Uncle Joe.”

Mikey crawled over me, nearly kneeing me in the stomach, and the bed shook behind me as he bounced onto the mattress between me and my husband Joe.

“Uncle Joe! How much longer?”

Joe, who had the patience of Job when it came to the kids, said, “At dinnertime.”

“We’re eating dinner during the soccer game?” Mikey asked incredulously.

“No.” The bed shifted as Joe sat upright. “You’re playing when we’re supposed to be eating dinner. How about I take us all out to dinner afterward to celebrate you winning the game?”

“But Aunt Rose says there are no winners or losers,” Mikey said, as though Joe had lost all the sense in his head. “We just play for fun.”

“Then everyone’s a winner. All the more reason to celebrate,” Joe said, and Mikey shrieked with laughter.

I rolled over to see Joe tickling his armpit, making him double over with giggles.

My heart swelled with love. I’d been raising my niece and nephew and had recently had Hope when we married. It wasn’t every man who would not only willingly but joyfully walk into an instant family of four. Then again, he’d been around long before I’d taken in my sister’s kids and become pregnant with Hope. He’d lived next door to Violet and the kids for a while, and they’d started calling him Uncle Joe way back then.

“Are you awake now, Aunt Rose?” Mikey asked when he saw me looking at him.

“Now I am,” I said with a warm smile, then teased, “I really wish you were more excited about your first game.”

“I am excited!” Mikey squealed. “I am!”

I gathered him in my arms and hugged him tightly with tears welling in my eyes. My sister should have been the one he gushed to about his upcoming game, but Violet had died three and a half years ago. Then, less than a year later, her husband was sent to prison for fifteen years, and he’d made Joe and me the kids’ legal guardians. I considered every day with them a blessing, especially after he’d tried to keep them from me for a short period after my sister’s death. But I suspected neither Mikey nor his sister Ashley remembered that, and I wasn’t going to tell them.

“You’re hugging me too tight, Aunt Rose,” Mikey said, wiggling in my arms.

“I’m just trying to fill you with love before you go to school.”

“I already have lots of love,” he said, sitting back on his heels. He turned to Joe. “Don’t I, Uncle Joe?”

“You sure do, buddy,” Joe said, his voice tight as he reached for Mikey and hugged him too.

“Why’s everybody so huggy today?” Mikey said, shrugging Joe off after a few seconds.

“It’s a huggy kind of day,” I said, the unshed tears stinging my eyes.

Mikey hopped off the bed and ran out the door, always in a hurry to get to where he was going.

“Go get ready for school,” I called after him. “We’ll be down to make breakfast in a few minutes.”

After he left, Joe turned to face me, sorrow filling his eyes. “You’re feelin’ it too?”

I nodded, trying to keep my tears from falling. “Violet should be here, Joe. She should be the one he runs to with his excitement.”

He turned to me and cupped my cheek, giving me a gentle kiss before pulling back and smiling at me lovingly. “I know, darlin’, but she’s not. So we’ll just make sure he and Ashley feel her love through us.”

I nodded, but the sad truth was Mikey didn’t even remember his mother. He pretended he did when we talked about her or Ashley brought up a memory, but other than photos and the few videos Violet and Mike had taken of themselves and the kids, his memory of her was a blank. It felt extra sad because my own birth mother had died when I was two months old. I hadn’t even known she’d existed until I was twenty-four, and the mother who’d raised me was murdered.

Lordy, that felt light years ago, but in truth, it had only been six.

---