Chapter 3 #3
And Payton Blankenship—six-foot-four, folded into a plastic chair—looking every bit a fantasy cowboy… well, his eyes go bright and wet right there under the fluorescent lights.
“I’m gonna be an uncle,” he whispers.
It is the single most unfairly sweet thing I have ever witnessed.
His phone buzzes again. He reads it and groans.
“Kelsie says I’m not allowed to tell Mom and Dad. Oliver gets to do it.” He glances down the row at his parents, who are sharing a vending machine coffee and have no idea. “This is going to kill me.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I’m not built for secrets, Jules.”
I believe him. Everything he feels is right there on his face, out in the open, like it’s never once occurred to him to hide it. I don’t know what that would even be like.
Two women blow through the doors a few minutes later like they’ve been summoned by some kind of family bat signal, husbands in tow.
One husband scans the exits the way men do when they’re doing reconnaissance.
I watch a lot of police procedurals. The other is tall and rumpled and apologizes to a chair in a British accent when he bumps it.
Kelsie and Addison, I learn—the two sisters Cowboy mentioned.
Both of them beeline for Payton, and there is a lot of fierce whispering and at least one smack to the back of his head.
Then the double doors open, and Oliver walks out with my sister.
Hope’s up before I can blink. I catch her wrist.
“Wait.”
“Jules—”
“Just. Wait.”
Because Cora’s in a green party dress and a pair of hospital socks, mascara gone to ruin, and she hasn’t seen us. She’s looking at them. At all of them, rising out of their chairs. I watch a silver-haired woman cross the room and pull my sister into her arms like she’s been doing it for years.
Hope goes still beside me.
I tug her back a step, into the doorway of the vending room, out of the way. Then another.
We stay there. We watch Pops put his big hand on top of Cora’s head.
We watch Oliver tuck her into his side and tell his parents, low and careful, that the baby is his.
We watch Mimz clap her hands like she personally arranged the whole thing.
We watch Payton hoist that paper sack over his head and announce that he brought pancakes, which he feels demonstrates excellent uncle energy.
And I watch Cora’s face. The thing it has always done when someone is kind to her—flinch, then soften, then brace. Except tonight it stays soft.
Every foster kid has a list. The things you want but never say out loud, because saying them out loud is how you jinx them. A family that shows up. A room full of people who stand when you walk in.
Cora just got hers.
I want it for her so badly my ribs ache with it.
But there is a small, mean, twelve-year-old part of me that thinks: So that’s how we lose her.
Hope’s fingers find mine and squeeze. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to.
It’s a long time before Cora spots us over Mimz’s shoulder. When she does, her whole face crumples. She mouths, You came.
Like there was ever a universe where we wouldn’t.
She breaks away and crosses the lobby, and then it’s the three of us in a knot by the vending machines, Cora crying and Hope crying and me absolutely not crying, just breathing hard in the general vicinity of their hair.
“I told you not to freak out,” Cora says into my shoulder.
“And we listened. This is us calm.”
“I’m so sorry. I ruined their whole night—”
“Don’t you dare apologize.” I pull back and hold her face in my hands. “Are you okay? Really?”
She glances over her shoulder. Oliver’s standing a few feet back, giving us room, watching her like she’s the only fixed point in the building.
“Yeah,” she says, and her voice goes soft on it. “I think I really am.”
Ten minutes later, he walks her out to his truck with one arm around her waist. The rest of the Blankenships trickle out behind them in a slow, hugging, arguing herd.
Hope yawns so wide her jaw cracks. She’s got an hour’s drive home and a seven a.m. client.
“You eat anything tonight besides that candy bar?”
Payton. Hands shoved in the pockets of that denim jacket, tie hanging loose, the last Blankenship in the room.
“I had two candy bars.”
“That’s what I figured.” He jerks his chin toward the exit. “There’s a taco place out on the highway that stays open till one. Best carne asada in the county.”
Hope looks at me. I look at Hope. Her eyebrows are doing the thing again.
“I rode with Hope,” I say.
“And I have to hit the road,” Hope says, much too quickly, already backing toward the doors with her keys out. “Early client. So early. Tragically early.”
Traitor.
“I’ll drive you home after,” Payton says. “Scout’s honor.”
“Were you a Scout?”
“For about a month. It didn’t take.”
I should say no. I’m thirty-two years old. He’s a baby. It’s almost midnight, and I’ve spent the last two hours terrified.
But Cora’s okay. The baby’s okay. And I’m starving.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m getting extra guac, and you’re paying for it.”
His grin could light the whole parking lot.
It’s tacos. Nobody ever made a life-altering decision over tacos.