Page 93 of The Unhinged Christmas of a Cat Lady
I sigh. “I’m not mad at him all the time anymore, if that’s what you mean.”
SJ nods, like that makes sense. He folds a bit of crust into a rough dinosaur shape, then immediately bites its head off.
“Are yougoingto?” he asks, voice quiet now.
I pause, studying him. “Would you like that?”
He shrugs again. Less evasive this time, more unsure.
“I don’t know,” he says, picking at a crumb near his plate. “I like you like now.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Like now?”
He nods. “You laugh more. And you don’t do the thing with your face.”
“What thing with my face?”
He screws up his own in a dramatic frown. “This.”
I blink. “I don’t look like that.”
“You kind of did.”
“Well, that’s rude.”
He grins.
I reach over and ruffle his hair, which he immediately tries to fix with all the indignation of someone who believes their fringe is a personality trait.
“You seem happier,” he says, matter-of-fact, like it’s just another observation. Like saying the cat’s on the windowsill or the bin smells weird.
And I don’t know what to say to that. So I just nod.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I am.”
“But if you could be happy and with dad, then I’d like that too.”
He pops the rest of his toast into his mouth and stands up, grabbing his dinosaur.
“I’m going to go brush my teeth,” he announces, already halfway down the hall.
And just like that, the conversation’s over.
But the echo of it lingers underneath the clatter of mugs and the creak of floorboards and the sound of Twinklesocks launching herself into the laundry basket like it insulted her.
You seem happier.
It’s not a grand statement. Not a question.
But it’s true.
Bluewater is heaving. Not sure what I expected when deciding to head to a shopping centre this close to Christmas.
“Right,” Lizzie says, adjusting the oversized shopping bag on her shoulder like she’s about to summit Everest, “if I don’t sit down in the next five minutes, I’m going to start throwing a Lindt reindeer at strangers.”
“You’ve already thrown one,” I point out.
“Self-defence,” she says breezily. “The man shoved me. Elbowed me out of the way for a diffuser that smells like pine and shit.”
