16.
LYNN
“That wasn’t uncomfortable at all,” Lanna said sarcastically as she buckled Kaylynn into her high chair. She handed her a toy to entertain herself with while we worked on breakfast and then walked over and stood next to me at the open door of the refrigerator. As I started pulling things out, I handed them to her, and then she put them on the counter or the bar, depending on what we’d be using them for.
Once I had everything I needed, I gave her a kiss on the cheek before I said, “You didn’t plan for your water heater to break and you couldn’t have known I’d have company, even if you’d had time to think about it.”
“And I definitely didn’t. I was too busy stressing over the flooded garage and getting the girls ready for school.
As if the girls knew we were talking about them, they walked into the kitchen, looking harried and grumpy but freshly showered and dressed. Brinlee hopped up onto a stool and slammed her brush down before she shot daggers at her sister. Berklee was completely unaffected and perched on her stool before she bent over and picked up Roarke so he could sit on the stool beside her.
“What’s the problem?”
“She stole my shirt!”
“Haven't we had this argument before?” I asked as I started cracking eggs into a bowl. I pretended to contemplate the question before I answered my own question and said, “Yes! That’s right! It was last Tuesday.”
“I didn’t steal anything. I got there first.”
“Here’s the deal, pickles,” I said as I pulled the whisk out of the utensil jar and started whipping the eggs. “You have the same styles, wear the same sizes, and we made a deal.”
“I know, but she always steals my ideas!”
“That’s it. While we’re doing laundry on Sundays, we’ll plan what you’re going to wear for the week so we can avoid this argument in the future.”
“You know, you’ve got it made right now,” Lanna encouraged. “Having twice as many clothes to choose from is a pretty sweet deal.”
“We either make a schedule, or we start putting your initials on the tags,” I warned.
Berklee grinned before she said, “We’ve got the same initials.”
When I just stared at her with a blank expression, Brinlee shrugged and said, “Well, we do.”
“I don’t have the patience for hair duty today,” Lanna said as she took the bowl of eggs from my hand. “I’ll take care of breakfast while you guys chat.”
“About what?” Berk asked, glancing over at her sister as if to make sure she hadn’t told any secrets. When Brin just raised her eyebrows, Berk looked back at me and said, “We didn’t do nothin’!”
I walked over and picked up the brush before I asked Berk, “How do you want your hair today?”
“Space buns.”
“I was going to . . .”
The look I gave Brin shut her up quickly, and I reminded her, “It’s your turn to go first tomorrow.”
“Life would be so much easier if you two didn’t have such a problem looking and dressing the same,” Lanna said as she added butter to a pan. The girls started listing out the reasons they didn’t want to look alike, even though it was impossible for them not to, considering they were identical in almost every way except for their personalities.
I cleared my throat before I said, “Girls, I need to talk to you about something for a minute.”
“What’s up?” Berk asked.
“You know I’ve been seeing a woman, right?”
“Yep. You’ve got a girlfriend,” Brin said cheerfully.
“Well, my girlfriend is here right now.”
Berklee hissed when she turned to look out the window but couldn’t because of the tight grip on her hair. Brin, on the other hand, hopped down and looked outside before she said, “There’s not a car here, and there wasn’t an extra one in the garage.”
“She came here in my truck and spent the night. She’s in the shower, but she should be out soon.”
“Do we have to call her anything?” Brinlee asked.
“Her name is Farrah, not anything,” I quipped. Even Lanna rolled her eyes, and I smiled when the girls groaned. Roarke didn’t know what was going on, but he laughed at the perfect time. I said, “See? He gets my humor.”
“He also laughs at farts,” Lanna said drolly.
“Farts are funny.”
Roarke made a farting noise and then giggled uncontrollably, which made all of us laugh too. Suddenly, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to find Farrah standing there with an unsure look on her face.
“There she is!” I said cheerfully. “Farrah, these are my granddaughters, Berklee and Brinlee.”
“Hello,” Farrah said cautiously. When the girls chorused their hellos right back, Roarke mimicked them and added another fart noise that made us all laugh again, but Farrah was in on the joke this time.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Brinlee said politely as she walked over to Farrah. She stuck her hand out and said, “I’m Brinlee.”
“It’s nice to meet you too.”
Berk still couldn’t move because I was holding the hair on the other side of her head now, so she stuck her hand out and said, “Hello, I’m Berk.”
Farrah walked over and took Berklee’s hand before she said, “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about all of you that I feel like I know you already.”
“Pop has talked about you, too, and we have some questions.”
“Okay,” Farrah said hesitantly as she looked at me with wide eyes.
“Our mom is in prison, and she’s going to be there for a long time, so we’ve got questions,” Brinlee said cheerfully.
“Girls . . .”
“Pop, you’ve gotta realize that we’re not babies, and you’re not really good at whispering. We hear things.”
“You eavesdrop,” I grumbled.
“We do that too,” Berklee agreed. “Now, can we ask you our questions, or are we supposed to pretend that you’re just a regular person who’s never done anything wrong?”
“I’ll answer what I can,” Farrah said hesitantly.
“Good!”
I winced before I leaned over and whispered in Farrah’s ear, “Sorry.”
“I guess it’s better to get it out in the open than pretend I’m anything other than who I am, right?” Farrah whispered back.
“Atta girl. Go in with guns blazing,” I told her before I gave her a peck on the cheek. I smiled at her before I said, “That’s just how they roll.”
◆◆◆
FARRAH
“Do they let you have hair ties in prison?”
“Do they make you eat vegetables?”
“Who decides what you watch on television?”
“Do you have a bedtime or can you stay up as long as you want?”
“Can you paint your fingernails?”
The girls fired questions at me almost quicker than I could answer, and I was surprised when Lanna and Lynn even added a few. Luckily, almost every question could be answered with a simple “yes” or “no,” and I didn’t have to elaborate.
But then Berklee asked the real zinger of the day.
“Since you were in prison, you couldn’t get married and have a baby, huh?”
“Actually, I have a son named Colt, but he was born before I went to prison.”
“How old was he when you went to prison?”
“The first time I went, he . . .”
“The first time?” Brinlee interrupted. “You’ve been more than once?”
“I have.”
“They make you go to bed early and don’t let you paint your fingernails and you still didn’t learn your lesson?” Berklee asked.
The look on her face was a mixture of disgust and disbelief, but it was so cute I had to laugh. “No. I didn’t learn my lesson and messed up two more times.”
“Where did your little boy live? Why isn’t he with you now?” Berklee asked.
Brinlee chimed in with, “How old was he when you went away?”
“The first time I went to prison, he stayed in a foster home with a wonderful couple who came to love him very much. When I went back to prison, I let them adopt him.”
“And now you’re not his mom anymore,” Berklee said sadly.
“I’ll always be his mother, but I wasn’t a very good one, so it was better for him to live with another family.”
Brinlee narrowed her eyes at me before she asked, “Did you quit talking to him?”
I glanced at Lynn and he grimaced but didn’t intervene, so knowing what little I did about his daughter’s decision to stop contact, I changed the narrative to fit their situation a little better. “You know, there was a time when I worried that keeping in touch with me would make it hard for Colt to get used to life with me away, but I never stopped loving him or thinking about him. It was hard to make that decision and I’m sure he didn’t understand, but at the time, I thought it was for the best.”
“Do you miss talking to him?”
I smiled before I said, “I talk to him all the time. As a matter of fact, he’s the reason I moved to Rojo when I was released.”
“He’s not mad at you for making bad decisions?” Berklee asked.
“He was very mad at me for a long time, but he has done a lot of work with his therapist, and that has helped him work through the anger and find some peace of mind.”
“We talk to a therapist,” Berklee informed me.
“So do I.”
“You do?” Berklee asked in awe.
“It took me a very long time to realize that I couldn’t fight my addiction successfully unless I had help, so I attend meetings with others who are in recovery and trying to acclimate to freedom and all the pressures of the outside world. I also see a wonderful woman named Dr. Hamilton.”
“She’s our doctor!” Brinlee said cheerfully. “She’s the best.”
“She really is,” I agreed.
“Did you kill anybody?” Berklee asked. When I shook my head, she said, “Our mom did. One time, we were in a wreck with her but didn’t really get hurt, and the next time she was in a wreck, she killed someone. Now she’s going to be in prison until we’re old.”
“Do you think she’ll learn her lesson the first time, or will she have to go back?” Brinlee asked.
“I have no idea, honey, but I do know that you’re very lucky to have your Pop and the rest of your family to take care of you while she’s gone.”
“Can we meet your son?” Berklee asked.
I glanced over at Lynn in panic, and he said, “You’ve met her son before.”
“We have?”
“Do you remember the nice police officer that watched videos with you after the wreck you were in with your mom?”
“Yeah!” they answered in unison.
“That’s my son, Colt.”
“Hmm,” Brinlee said as she reached for the plate of food Lanna slid across the table. “I guess you didn’t mess him up too much before you went away.”
Lynn choked on the sip of coffee he’d just taken and then cleared his throat before he tugged on Brinlee’s braid and said, “You’re not messed up, kiddo.”
“I’m a hot mess,” Brinlee exclaimed.
Berklee rolled her eyes before she said, “Aunt Lanna tells us that all the time.”
“But I don’t mean you’re messed up because of . . . That’s not what that means. I don’t want you to . . .”
Berklee interrupted her aunt’s stammering explanation to say, “Girl, you forget to put on shoes before you leave the house sometimes. I think you’re even more of a hot mess than we are!”
“That only happened one time!”
“You lost your keys, and Uncle Kyle found them in the refrigerator,” Brinlee chimed in.
“I was unloading groceries and . . .”
“You forgot Roarke’s name yesterday.”
Lanna’s eyes filled with tears as she lifted her arm as if to reach out to her son. Her face crumbled, and she wailed, “I didn’t mean to.”
“Shit. You’ve done it now, Berk,” Lynn said as he put the brush down next to his coffee mug and hurried around the counter.
“Blarke is a great name! You should name your next baby Blarke! Don’t you think so, Brin?” Berklee asked.
“Definitely! I like that name so much that I may name my first kid Blarke!”
I looked over at the little boy in question. He was oblivious to the trauma his mom was experiencing at the mere mention of calling him the wrong name. However, when his mom, and most likely his pediatrician, retrieved the scrambled egg he was currently stuffing up his nose, he’d probably have a completely different reaction.
I glanced over at Lynn, who had pulled his very pregnant daughter into his arms to console her, and the girls who had jumped up to join in before I took the initiative and redirected . . . Shit! What was the kid’s name again? Not Blarke. It was . . .
At this point, it didn’t really matter. As soon as I stopped him from the nostril stuffing, I should probably encourage the little girl to quit smearing syrup in her hair.
Lynn could handle the rest himself. Right now, I just needed to pinch myself so I could make sure that this wasn’t a dream. This man, a loving and caring father and grandfather, wanted a relationship with me.
Which meant that I’d be able to develop a relationship with his family, as crazy as it may be.
The thought was terrifying and absolutely fantastic at the same time!
◆◆◆
“We missed our morning coffee chat today,” Moe said slyly as I walked into the new building that would house the store where we’d soon be selling plants and all the accoutrements that went with them. “Do you have anything you’d like to share with the class, Farrah?”
“Oh, she’s got that look,” Fiona said before she groaned and shook her head. “Jealousy isn’t a good look for anyone, but we’re all feeling it right now.”
“Apparently, she was feeling something else, and I’d say it wasn’t long ago judging from that glow,” Moe surmised.
I giggled like a kid before I admitted, “I’m so fucking tired, and there are parts of me that are so sore that I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk upright. Sitting is an issue too.”
“Bitch,” Serana hissed.
“No need to gloat about it,” Taylor said grumpily. “Hag.”
I smiled brightly as I asked “Jealous much? Do you know what time Ginger gets off? I need to run some errands today.”
“She’s not working at the bakery today. She’s over in the greenhouse with Meredith.”
“If she’s here, then where is my car?”
Every woman in the room turned to look at me before Moe reached for the radio on her belt and called for Ginger. When she responded, Moe asked, “Where is Farrah’s car?”
“I guess she came home sometime last night because it’s not where I parked it when we got home after dinner,” was Ginger’s answer. “I left the key in her mailbox like I always do when I borrow it.”
“Someone stole my fucking car?” I screeched.
“What’s going on?” Zoey asked as she walked out of the office.
“Well, Farrah just got home with a sexed-up glow. Also, Ginger drove her car home last night and then put the keys in the mailbox like always, but now Ginger’s here, and the car is not.
“Hmm. Which one of the girls do you think stole it?” Moe asked sarcastically.
“Shit!” Zoey hissed before she grabbed Moe’s radio and said, “Everyone come to the office immediately. If you see someone not walking this way, drag them with you.”
“That’s my car,” I whispered sadly as I walked toward the window.
“We’ll find it,” Zoey assured me. “Call and report it stolen.”
“What if one of the other girls borrowed it?” I asked.
“Borrowing without permission is called theft, Farrah. Make the call.”