Page 1 of Indulgence
Chapter One
Natalie
“Mom, have you seen mylacrosse cleats?”
If I’d told him once, I’d told him a million times. Put your lacrosse stuff in your lacrosse bag in the garage when you come home from practice.
“Did you put them in your lacrosse bag like you were supposed to?” I called back as I tried to get everyone’s lunches into the correct lunchboxes.
Turkey for Jackson.
Ham and cheese for Emma.
Chicken salad for Matteo.
And a garden salad for me.
“Mom, Saturn’s rings fell off,” Emma screeched from the end of the hall. “I need you to help me put them back on. I worked too hard to get anything less than an A.”
Oh, my little perfectionist. No wonder she was always so stressed. She couldn’t accept anything less than the best. I felt sorry for her future husband.
“And hurry. The bus will be here in ten minutes,” she added as if I weren’t already aware of the time her bus came every morning or what time it currently was.
“I still can’t find my cleats, Mom,” Jackson called out again. I felt equally sorry for his future wife as I did for my future son-in-law. That boy was a mess of disorganization and food crumbs. “I need them for practice after school.”
I took a deep breath and then let it out. In and out.
His cologne—Curve, the same it had been since college—invaded my senses before he kissed the top of my head and snatched a banana muffin from the plate on the counter.
“Jackson,” he called out to our son. “Your cleats are in the back of my car. Emma, get the glue gun. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Thank you.” I exhaled heavily. How was I so exhausted already? It was only seven thirty. “It’s as if they are completely incapable of verbalizing the word Dad when they feel the tiniest bit of crisis. It’s always Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.”
I loved my children, but from the moments of their births, which happened six minutes apart, they hadn’t stopped. Some days, like this one, I woke up drained.
Matteo smiled the grin that always grounded me. “They just know who is better at everything.”
I rolled my eyes as my lips tipped up on one side. “You don’t need to lay it on so thick this early in the morning, babe.”
His forest-green eyes twinkled. “But it got a half a smile out of you.”
“Dadddd!” Emma yelled, the inflection of her voice showcasing her panic. “The glue gun is ready. We don’t have much time.”
Matteo shook his head. “I better go before she has a heart attack.”
* * *
The restof the day wasn’t any less hectic.
It was actually a day from hell.
Metro was a gallery in downtown Seattle that was run by a brother and sister duo from France and featured art from all over the world. Bastien Bisset was an abstract expressionist painter and Annetta managed his career. I managed the gallery.
“Phillip, how does a painting just go missing?” I asked exasperatedly because, how could a shipping company lose a giant painting? We had a new exhibition starting next week,Emergence, which was a showing of emerging artists, and it would run for two weeks.
Phillip clicked and typed on his end while I stood on the loading dock in the back of the gallery with a driver who did not have the painting on his truck. “It has not been scanned off the truck, Mrs. Collins.”
“The only boxes left on this truck are not large enough to house the painting, Phillip,” I told him. “I assure you it is not on this truck. If this is the new standard of service at Echo Logistics, Metro is going to have to move our business elsewhere.”
