Chapter 18 Maxford
MAXFORD
The house smells incredible when I walk in after finishing at the gym on Friday.
The ink isn’t dry but I’m in full-blown training mode.
Thanks to my undoing all the damage of my diet during my baseball sabbatical, I’m on a strict no bread, no sugar, no fun regimen.
I let myself get a little soft through the center, so I’ve focused on weights and sprints again.
“Hey, kiddo, I found your water bottle in the library.” I set it next to Emma, who’s hunched over her iPad at the bar. I put down my bags by the front door and walk into the kitchen. “Where’s your mom?”
“She got home from doing the present wrapping thing for school and the neighbor next door called because there was an emergency or something. So she’s there.”
I consider going over to see if she needs help, but my stomach growls and more importantly, Emma seems off. “What smells good?”
“Mom made lasagna.” There’s frustration in her voice. “If you came home while she was gone, I’m supposed to tell you dinner’s sitting in the oven to stay warm if you want some. If not, cover it and put it in the fridge.”
“Sweet.” I open the oven door and pull out leftovers, helping myself to a big slab. Time to celebrate going four days without pasta-type carbs. There’s always next week. Grabbing a Diet Pepsi from the fridge, I balance my food as I walk to the bar and ask, “What’s going on?”
“Decimals are stupid.” She looks up from her device and scowls.
I flip the iPad around so I can see what she’s working on. It’s basic stuff, naming tenths, hundredths, thousandths. Then it moves on to making them into fractions. Taking a bite, I study the questions at the end of the section to check out the assignment.
There aren’t too many questions and this seems like something she can do in her sleep.
I’ve worked with kids for four months but I’m not fluent in them yet.
I’m fake married, and I don’t know what the rules say about offering advice to Emma, but I go for it anyway.
Something’s bugging her and it’s not converting three-fourths to a decimal.
“It’s Friday night. Why are you doing homework?” I take another bite and she takes the iPad back.
“Then it’s done and I can relax all weekend.”
She’s way ahead of the curve if she’s thinking like this at ten.
I want to praise her and remind her to live a little while digging into what’s bothering her; however, my muscles are sore and if I keep shoveling lasagna in my mouth at this speed, I’m going to go into a happy, warm food coma sooner rather than later.
There’s no time to beat around the bush here—I’m going to have to ask straight out. “And what’s bugging you besides math?”
Emma’s eyes meet mine for the first time since I got home, and she’s holding back tears. “Reese invited Lucy to her late over tonight instead of me.”
I make out about half of what she said. “Help me understand what a late over is.”
“It’s where you stay up late and watch movies but you don’t spend the night. Mom doesn’t let me do sleepovers, but I can do late overs.” Ah. I seriously know so little about kids.
“Did you and Reese get in a fight?” I run through things I’ve heard through the grapevine at school. The one nice thing is, they openly discuss who they’re mad at with their friends and I haven’t heard Emma’s name floated around.
“No, I don’t think so.” She furrows her brow. “She always invites a few people over for these, but she said her mom only let her have one friend tonight, and she picked Lucy instead of me.”
I stab my fork on a lasagna noodle. “Well, that sucks.”
“Right? Mom said Lucy’s been sad since her grandpa died, which is why Reese picked her.”
“That might be true but you can still be sad about it.” One thing Stella did well as our guardian was to tell us to never dismiss our feelings. They were valid and it was okay to have them.
She considers this as if she hadn’t thought about it before and sniffs. “They’re going to make a gingerbread house from scratch.”
I’ve never made one that didn’t come in a store-bought kit and tastes like hard cardboard, but I’m going to turn this night around even if I’m exhausted.
I already wrecked my meal plan for the day; might as well go all out.
“That’s a crazy coincidence because I was planning on making my famous sugar cookies tonight.
You wouldn’t want to help me, would you? ”
“No, you weren’t,” she rolls her eyes. “I heard you tell Mom you’re not even supposed to eat that junk right now if you want to be fast enough to run the bases and quick enough to cover third.”
“You know what? You’re being a buzzkill, so now you don’t get any.
” I shrug, setting my plate into the sink.
The pantry is well-stocked for any baking needs, and I help myself to flour and sugar.
I haul the KitchenAid onto the counter. Emma’s eyeing me.
The internal debate about whether to join in brews on her face.
I pull out two eggs from the fridge, grab the salt and the baking soda.
Then I go back to the fridge and grab a bunch of eggs, juggling them one at a time until I have six circling through the air.
My random resume talent does the trick. “Okay, I’ll help.” She jumps down off the barstool and grabs the Bluetooth speaker, bringing it to life. “But on one condition.”
“Name it,” I dare her.
“I get to pick the music.”
I motion for her to go ahead and she syncs her iPad to the speaker. A moment later, a boy band fills the kitchen. Emma springs into action, washing her hands, then pulling out measuring cups. She grabs two sticks of butter from the fridge and twists around sassily.
“Bet you don’t know the trick to soften butter?”
“Fill a glass of water and heat it in the microwave, dump the water out and then cover the unwrapped stick of butter with the glass, trapping it in the steam?” I say matter-of-factly.
“How’d you know?” She’s solemn.
“I’m thirty-five and have two sisters. They made me bake a lot with them.”
My explanation garners slouched shoulders, like I’m somehow cheating her of the opportunity to dazzle me with her wealth of knowledge. I look at the speaker. “What are we listening to?”
“Who,” she corrects. “One Direction.”
“Oh, this is them? My sister had dinner with them once a long time ago.”
Her eyes go wide. “What! You’re lying. No offense but you teach P.E. How in the world did your sister have dinner with them?”
“Maybe you haven’t heard, kid, but in another life, I was a very revered third baseman, thank you very much.
And my twin sister is an actress.” I pull up a photo on my phone of the three of us two years ago in Italy, and show her.
“There’s Violet, our older sister, and the redhead is Madelyn.
She’s the one who had dinner with One Direction. ”
“Oh! Yes! She’s pretty. Yeah, that makes sense, then.” She bites her lip and focuses on her butter-softening task as I measure out sugar and oil. I love that in the mind of a ten-year-old, my sister being pretty equals automatic dinner with a famous band.
A second song comes on and she sings along, not missing a word. After a verse, she says, “You’re really lucky you have a twin.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“Because I love that I have Mom all to myself but I think it’d be fun to have a sibling.”
“It was pretty fun growing up together. We fought a lot but we also looked out for one another.”
“Did your parents get mad at you guys for fighting?”
“Uh, well, they did. And then they passed away.”
Her face drops, realizing, for the first time maybe, that we have the worst kind of thing in common. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. We lived with Stella, and Violet inherently took over the motherly role.
She’s great like that—Madelyn and I always called her our sister-mom because she’d make sure we had the coolest shoes for school or got our field trip forms signed.
You’re lucky you have your mom, though. She loves you a lot.
” I sneak a glance and she agrees to that with a nod.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure.” This seems like an invitation to hear something inappropriate or out of my wheelhouse as the fake member of the family. Again, what are the rules? I wonder and brace myself.
“Mom’s been more fun since you showed up.” Emma’s features soften and she smiles, as if recalling something specific that made her decide this. “I think she likes you for real. Do you like her for real?”
I can’t even lie to her, and I’m only a little embarrassed I can’t stop the grin that spreads across my face. “Yeah, kid, I do.”
Half an hour later, Nola walks through the back door into the kitchen and takes in the two of us busy at work, making frosting and scooping the last of the cookie dough onto the baking sheet.
One Direction’s still going strong. Lucky for me, they have a lengthy back catalogue that doesn’t stop.
Nola’s in a monochromatic sweatsuit and her hair is pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, wavy strands breaking free.
There’s something in her eyes I can’t quite place but she’s not mad. That much I can tell.
“What do you two have going on here?” she asks.
“Mom!” Emma lights up. “Did you know that Coach once hit a grand slam and to celebrate, he drank too much juice and backed his car into a garbage truck? Isn’t he funny?” She laughs just as hard sharing the story as she did hearing me tell it ten minutes ago.
“Juice, huh?” Nola smirks and raises a brow. “Your Land Cruiser?”
I give her a half smile. “No, my brand new Toyota Tundra.”
“That’ll teach you to drink ‘juice’”—she puts the word in air quotes and chuckles. “Sorry about how long that took, monkey.”
“What happened this time?” Emma asks.
Nola picks up a cooled, unfrosted cookie and takes a bite. “Mr. Johnson fell again and Mrs. Johnson couldn’t lift him alone.”
“Is he okay?” Emma’s face contorts in worry.