Page 111 of The Woman with the Wallet

“The diamond that you stole from me?” I asked. “Plus a couple of others. Yep. You gonna marry me, sugar?”

“That depends,” she said, but her eyes were already glassy. I had my answer. She just had to be difficult. And I loved that about her.

“On what?”

“If you stop bitching about my blanket collection or not.”

“I’m working with Ant to build you a space-saving way to store them all in the closet of our next place.”

“Well then,” she said, pressing her forehead to mine. “I guess we’re gonna get married then.”

Max - 11 years

“Dude, how many times have we talked about the shoes?” I grumbled, nearly face-planting with my arms full of grocery bags.

“Sorry, Mom,” my nine-year-old said. He didn’t mean it. He would do it again. But parenting was about choosing your battles. I was willing to lose the one with the shoes if it meant I won the one about him making sure he brought cups and bowls out of his room before they started to grow green and fuzzy shit on them.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, turning to kick them in the general direction of the shoe cubbies where each of the kids had spots to place their shoes.

“Mama, your shoes,” my six-year-old said, giving me a disapproving head shake.

“What about you?” I asked, looking at our three-year-old who looked like he was about to stick Miko’s cell phone in his mouth. “Got anything to say?”

“Cheese.”

“Yes, bubba, I got your cheese sticks,” I said. His holy meltdown about being out of them was the reason I’d dragged my round, pregnant ass out of the apartment when all I really wanted to do was sit with my feet up and have one of the cats make biscuits on my leg while I ate Twizzlers.

“Where is…”

“Okay. I think I fixed it. So don’t tell Mom,” Chuck was saying as he came down the hall.

“Don’t tell Mom what?” I asked, shooting small eyes at him.

“Busted,” Chuck said, getting giggles out of the younger two kids. “Well, we, uh, might have broken the remote,” he said, waving it at me.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?” I asked, rolling my eyes at his terrible tape job.

“I was hoping you might blame the cats.”

After a not-so-subtle shove out of the apartment the week after the whole diamond situation was handled, Chuck had gone back upstate. To pack his shit before making the move to the city permanently.

He quickly became a fixture in our lives. One I tolerated more and more because the guy had gotten surprisingly good at cooking. And it was far too easy for me to get sick of figuring out what to feed a bunch of ravenous boys day in and day out.

“What are you making?” I asked, taking a deep breath as I reached into one of the bags for the cheese sticks and handed it to my toddler.

“Spaghetti and meatballs. They voted,” he said, waving at the kids. “They also vetoed a side of broccoli. Or spinach in the sauce.”

“Of course they did. They treat vegetables the way vampires treat garlic. Where’s Miko?”

We were happy for the kids to have an uncle in Chuck, who had no real family of his own, but we generally chose not to leave him alone with the kids. He was too gullible. And our kids were far too manipulative.

“Right here,” Miko said, coming out from the bedroom to lift the bags from my hands. “No, no more cheese,” he said when the toddler whined. “Dinner is almost ready, little man.”

Our son pouted but didn’t throw another fit, thankfully.

“Did you get your cherry plastic?” he asked.

“Strawberry,” I said, following him so I could pull the bag of Twizzlers out of the bag. “Went with the big one. This baby won’tbe denied,” I said, patting my belly that felt close to bursting as Miko quickly put the food away.

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