I wink at him. “Love.”
Hannah lets out the longest sigh I’ve ever heard. It lasts for at least five full seconds—which is a long time for a sigh. “Oh my God, the secret ingredient is Parmesan cheese. Mom always put Parmesan cheese in the eggs. You know that, Liam. God, you’re such a…”
He lifts an eyebrow. “I’m such a what, Hannah.”
“You know what.”
For a moment, the two of them stare at each other, and it’s so quiet in the room that I could hear the coffee machine humming. But then Liam snorts loudly and goes back to his eggs. I envy his ability to ignore his sister’s irritability. If eggs are my superpower, ignoring Hannah is Liam’s. Nothing she says ever gets to him. And the truth is, despite their sparring, Hannah adores Liam. The minute she started walking, she was following him around. These days, he’s probably her favorite person in the house. I suspect I come in fourth, after Jason and probably her phone.
“Well, I think the eggs taste especially good today,” Liam says. And he smiles, blinking up at me with those eyelashes that Hannah complains are unfairly long. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”
And Hannah rolls her eyes.
I love Hannah. I really do. I love her more than I love my own life. She’s my daughter. She’s my little girl.
But Liam is my favorite. I can’t help it. From the moment he was born and I became a mother, I knew no matter how many other children I had, he would be my favorite. Nobody else had a chance. Even if Hannah liked my eggs better and didn’t roll her eyes, it wouldn’t matter. Liam would still be my favorite.
He’s my favorite, even knowing what he’s capable of.
And I will protect him with every fiber of my being.
Chapter 3
Erika
Just as Hannah and Liam are finishing up their breakfast, the back door slams shut. It’s Jason, back from his jog.
About a year ago, I purchased a scale for our master bathroom. The first time my husband stepped on it, he was horrified. “Did I really get that fat, Erika?” he asked me about twenty times over the next several days. Followed by, “How could you let me get that fat?” By the end of the week, he made a solemn oath that he was going to get back in shape. He was going to eat right and exercise and get back to the weight he was when we got married. （To be fair, he was at least ten pounds overweight when we got married.）
At the time I laughed. But then he actually did it. He jogs every morning now. He doesn’t buy giant jugs of M&Ms. He switched from regular Coca-Cola to diet. （Or Coke Zero, which he says tastes much better than diet, although I am skeptical.） I don’t know much about what the numbers should be on the scale, but it’s obvious that at age forty-five, Jason is in the best shape of his life. I never noticed that he had been getting a gut until it vanished. And recently, when we got together with some other couples, another wife made a comment about my husband being “hot.” I was oddly proud. Although it made me feel like I need to start taking kickboxing or Zumba or something to firm up some of those soft, saggy areas on my middle-aged body.
“Erika!” Jason limps over to the stove to join me, his T-shirt damp with sweat. His knee has been acting up for the last few weeks, but he’s trying to push through it. “Are you making eggs? I’m starving.”
I crack an egg into the sizzling pan. “You got it.”
He leans in to kiss me on the neck, which is nice, despite how sweaty he is. “Egg-cellent.”
Hannah groans. “Oh my God, Dad. Please.”
“What’s wrong?” Jason blinks at her. “I’m just egg-cited about your mom’s cooking.”
Liam laughs. We’re all used to Jason’s puns. The general rule is that they’re always terrible, but sometimes they’re so terrible that it’s funny.
“Please stop, Dad.” Hannah shakes her head at him. “You’re being so cringe-y right now.”
Cringe-y is the word Hannah frequently uses to describe basically everything that Jason or I do. I hate that it bothers me on some level, although Jason seems to find amusing. His reasoning is that he was never cool, so why would it bother him that his teenage daughter doesn’t think he’s cool?
“Don’t you have to get ready for school, Hannah?” Jason says. “Don’t you have an egg-xam today?”
Even I laugh this time, although it’s more because of the look on Hannah’s face.
Hannah dashes upstairs to get dressed and hopefully brush her hair so I don’t get accused of child neglect, while Liam wanders into the living room because he gets a sense of when we want privacy. I continue to stir Jason’s eggs. Low and slow.