Page 21 of Carry Me Home
8
JACK
Mr. Owen Hitchins
Strawberry Rhubarb
Was it my imagination,or were those teeny tiny hearts over the i’s? I narrowed my eyes at Mom’s neat, precise handwriting on the label, then shifted to compare it to the pie label next to it. No hearts. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed, but Mr. Owen Hitchins had taken Mom out two weeks ago and she hadn’t come home until ten o’clock. On a fuckingweekday.
I knew Owen. He was about ten years older than me, which made him five or six years younger than Mom. A widower with a couple kids. Fuck that. She’d already raised kids. Now it was her time to have some fun. Without Owen, preferably. Hell, she was enlightened, wasn’t she? She didn’t need a man to have fun. Maybe she could take up embroidery with Essie and her friends.
“Jack!” Mom’s exasperated voice cut through my thoughts. “If you do something to his pie, I will turn you over my knee. You’re not too big or too old. Now, get Anna McIntire’s pie likeI told you. She’s always in a hurry and I don’t want to keep her waiting when she gets here.”
It didn’t surprise me that she could read my mind. Mom always knew when I was up to something. With one last glare at Owen’s strawberry rhubarb, I slid Anna’s turkey pot pie from the shelf above and shut the refrigerator glass door with my foot.
“You’re not going to spank me,” I said, delivering the pie to her waiting hands. “You didn’t even spank us when we were kids and deserved it. You’re definitely not going to start now.”
“Kidsneverdeserve it,” Mom snapped back. “They’re still learning how to be decent human beings, and the one lesson they absolutelydon’tneed is that might makes right. Adults don’t have that excuse, and that makes them fair game for walloping.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
The bell over the shop door jangled and Anna, looking harried as was to be expected, given that she had three kids at home and a belly round with another on the way, rushed in. She halted abruptly when she saw me and ran a hand over her hair like she was trying to remember if she had brushed it.
She hadn’t.
“Jack! Hi!” she greeted me.
“Hi, Anna.”
I couldn’t stop staring at her belly. We’d gone to school together—she had been two years behind me—friendly, but never all that close. It shouldn’t hit me like this, seeing her pregnant. But, shit. She was on her fourth. Most everyone I had grown up with in this town had all settled down and popped out at least one kid.
Except me.
I didn’t even want four kids, but I still felt left behind. Like I was all alone at an empty train station, waiting for the last trainhome. Disconcerting for a man who lived by the motto that if you weren’t five minutes early, you were already late.
“Don’t worry, I’m not due for another three weeks,” Anna said as Mom rang her up, because it was becoming clear to everyone that her stomach was making me nervous. “My water isn’t going to break all over your clean floor.”
I laughed. “If I don’t see you again for a while, congratulations. Your baby is beautiful.”
I hated standing around, so I grabbed a towel to wipe down the tables. I knew it drove Mom batty that I was here at all, but the way I saw it, she could use the free labor at Sweetie Pies, and I needed something to keep myself occupied when I wasn’t at Lodestar Ranch. Sleep only came easy when I had worn my body down to complete and utter exhaustion.
The door jangled again, followed by the tap of high heels on the wood floor and the soft scuff of sneakers. Nothing Mom couldn’t handle on her own. I focused on the table, rubbing hard at a sticky spot.
I felt eyes on me and glanced up to find Janie’s daughter considering me from the other side of the table, head tilted and eyes shrewd like I was a specimen under a microscope. “Maya.” I scanned the room but only saw the back of a woman in a calf-length black pencil skirt, her ruddy brown hair tucked in a French twist. Definitely not Janie. “Where’s your mom?”
“At work.” Her eyes focused on my shoulder. “That’s my grandmother over there with Miss Cat. She picks me up from school when Mom is working.”
“I see.” I swallowed my disappointment. “Are you here for pie?”
“Yes, but not for today. Miss Cat is catering our party next weekend.”
I wondered what the party was for, but before I could ask, Maya asked, “What’s your favorite dinosaur?”
“Bold of you to assume I have one,” I said. At her crestfallen expression, I hastily said, “T-rex.” It was the only dinosaur I could think of. Admittedly, my knowledge didn’t run deep.
It was the wrong answer. Judging from her expression, the T-rex was worse than not having a favorite dinosaur at all.
“Oh,” she sighed. “Boys always say that.”
