At Whit's End (Wells Ranch, #4)(12)
Nothing.
“Sorry, I forgot you said you had to come early today. Want some coffee while—” I shuffle toward the kitchen to find Blair already popping a coffee pod into the Nespresso machine, and my attention returns to my son. “Jonas!”
After another minute of utter silence, I make my way to his room, stepping in close to the thin paneled door and rapping my knuckles across it. I call his name out again, expecting a snarky response about how I need to exercise patience. There’s nothing he loves more than taking my canned “gentle parenting” phrases and throwing them back in my face.
When there’s still no sign of life, I swallow hard and give a firm knock before pushing his door open. “Jonas?”
In yesterday’s clothes, Jonas is sprawled like a starfish across the top of his bed, chest rising and falling with the gentle wave of deep slumber. His soft snores are reminiscent of when he was a baby sleeping on my chest. Warm and snuggly, making tiny snuffling noises against my bare skin. I hold on to the memory like it still fits in my arms.
He’s right here. And I miss him.
I can’t help myself—my socked feet glide silently across the floor, until I’m reaching out to sweep the hair covering his forehead so I can plant a light kiss on my baby boy.
He mumbles something nonsensical through chapped lips, drool dried to his cheek.
“Morning, kiddo. Time to get up and go with Auntie B,” I say softly, raking my hand through his hair. “She’s downstairs waiting.”
After a minute of grumbling and groaning and acting too much like a sullen teenager for my liking, he peels his body from the mattress and shuffles toward the dresser. When I feel confident enough that he won’t flop back down, I head downstairs.
“Sorry,” I say to Blair, joining her at the kitchen table and picking up my white mug labeled Mama. “It’s a fight to get him out of bed in the morning. Seems we’ve reached the teenager phase early.”
“Phase? You’re still like that.”
I laugh. “Fair point. He’s been permanently exhausted since he went to the ranch the other day. I think he was asleep by seven o’clock last night…. Hope he’s not getting sick.”
“Did he have fun?”
“When I asked him, his answer was a grunt. Which is too bad because Colt said he was welcome back anytime.”
I knew Jonas wouldn’t enjoy hard manual labor from the moment Denny called me to ask, but I said yes because Denny was trying to take some weight off Blair’s shoulders. As somebody who, admittedly, asks a lot of my sister, I jumped at the opportunity to ease her load.
In theory, I can work from home and keep Jonas here with me. He’s ten. It’s not like he’ll toss himself over a balcony railing if I take my eyes off him for a second. But given the opportunity, he’d play video games for fifteen hours straight, day in and day out, all summer long. And mom-guilt eats me alive when he does that for more than a single day. So I bear the shame that comes with asking my family to babysit, telling myself it’ll be beneficial for him in the long run. But damn it, I wish I could afford a nanny. I wish I had a reliable baby daddy. And though it pains me to admit it, sometimes I wish I had an easier kid.
“Colt’s a sweet guy,” Blair muses into her coffee.
“Colt was…” I search for something nice to say about the man who showed up wearing an incredibly offensive T-shirt and bumbled his way through convincing me he was a responsible adult. “He got Jonas home in one piece.”
Just then, Jonas appears at the top of the staircase, thudding his way down each step with a resounding yawn.
“Morning, sunshine,” Blair sings. “Hurry up and eat. We’ve got places to be.”
“Mornin’.” He makes his way to the pantry to grab a box of cereal, then grabs a bowl and spoon and stumbles toward the fridge for milk. He may as well be a sloth in a zoo, the way Blair and I are intently watching every painfully slow movement.
Loose cereal topples over the lip of his bowl, littering the counter, and some of his milk doesn’t quite make it where it’s meant to go. If I don’t find a way to ignore it, I might actually lose my mind, and then he’ll only move slower. If that’s humanly possible.
Averting my eyes before I have a conniption, I ask, “Anyway, how’s Mom?”
“Turns out there’s a limit to how many times I can be asked about my homework before I lose my cool with Mom, and that limit is twenty-seven.”
“You have homework?” The words sound soggy as Jonas spits them out around a mouthful of cereal.
“Thankfully, no. But Grandma gets a bit confused.” Blair gives him a reassuring smile.
My hands prop up my chin. “Rookie numbers. She reminded me to take my clean laundry home with me at least forty times the other day. Was I doing laundry at their house? Nope.”
Blair’s laughter comes out weak, followed by a sigh of understanding. Mom’s early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis last year hit everyone hard, but Blair has always been the quintessential eldest daughter, so she stepped into the primary caregiver role without a second thought. Practically shoulder-checked our dad out of the way.
Not that I mind. I’d done my best to help our parents, but Dad rarely called for assistance, and the first time Mom called me by another name, I crumpled to the floor in my laundry room. While she hasn’t always liked me, at least she loved Whit Hart as any parent loves their child. The loss of maternal connection feels like smoothing out the last few rough patches, removing the only places we still catch on each other and stick.