Page 7 of Brother to Brother

“Well, we do things a bit different here,” Ashton said and smiled.

“Right, so how do we want to do this?” Hayden asked, “All three of us to the laundry room?”

“Four,” I said, boosting Noah higher on my hip, “And sure, I’m not quite comfortable letting my little man out of my sight just yet.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Ashton smiled.

“You have any?” I asked.

“I can’t,” she said and I could see it pained her.

“We’ve been trying, but no luck just yet,” Hayden said, blushing.

“Revelator and Mandy have a seven month old girl named Eden, and they’re already pregnant with their second. Ghost and Shelly are pregnant with their first, so there’s that.” Ashton beamed. She and Hayden had set down their bins and grocery items and were pulling the bags out and replacing them with laundry to carry down. Hayden popped an odd looking container of laundry soap on top of one of the piles of clothes.

I asked Noah, “Go for a laundry basket ride?”

“Yah!”

“You going to hold still?” I asked.

“Yah!”

I nestled Noah in among the laundry in the basket I’d loaded and hefted it, groaning. “Oi! You’re getting too big for this, monkey boy!”

“No!” he called laughing and giggling.

“Yes!”

My son and I bantered back and forth as I followed the two women out and downstairs in search of the laundry room. We found the door, down at the end, by way of following our noses and the smell of drier sheets on the crisp, but not terribly cold, spring air. It was warm in the laundry room where two of the seven driers were going. We took up three of the seven washers, the units stacked, washer on bottom, drier on top, along the little room’s walls. Three on one end four along another wall, the remaining two walls containing a sink, a coin dispenser, and a powdered laundry soap dispenser. The free long wall had a Formica workbench where residents could fold their clothes.

“Shi-oot!” I cried, “I forgot the quarters on the coffee table.”

“I’ll get them,” Hayden said brightly, “I’ll be right back.”

“Thank you,” I called after her.

Ashton and I sorted laundry into the washers and Hayden returned with the quarters, Ashton opened up the laundry soap container, extracting little pillow packs of detergent.

“I’ve never used those, are they any good?”

“Oh my god,yes,” she said, “You have to use two for loads this size, but they are so convenient, you just have to make sure your hands are totally dry before you handle them orbigmess.”

“That and you should find someplace really high to keep them, they’re shiny and pretty and awfully appealing to little ones to stick in their mouths,” she made a face and I had to agree.

“Pretty sure he’d only do it once, but I’d rather not have to call poison control freaking out,” I agreed.

I picked Noah up along with the laundry basket on the floor and we returned upstairs with our baskets and bins. Ashton set a timer on her phone to remind us to go back down and switch the laundry out to the driers and start the last two loads.

“Archer left me a little money for pizza for lunch, I um, I don’t have anything to pay you for the laundry soap or –” the women started laughing, cutting me off.

“Trust me, Melody. Money isnoobject for me; consider this a ‘welcome’ present from the club.” Ashton smiled and I shifted uncomfortably.

“She’s serious, not to be rude, but she’s a millionaire and I while I come from old money;I do just fine for myself with interior decorating. This stuff,” Hayden swept out a hand, “Is really nothing, for either of us.”

“It still doesn’t feel right,” I murmured.

“I’ve been where you are, starting from nothing…” Ashton said softly, and launched into the story about how she and Trigger first met, and how the club helped her.

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