Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
He wasn’t saying much of anything, but both the girls, as well as TJ and I, could feel his simmering anger.
He was convinced that today would go bad.
Me? I wasn’t sure.
I knew that Allegra’s father was the money man in this county. However, the judge that presided over it had proved himself a good man over and over again from what little I’d heard about him.
I was sure that Travis’ worries were for naught.
However, I let him fume, and did my normal daily routine of getting the kids up and ready for school and daycare, only with one addition of Alex to the mix.
Everyone was up, clothed, and fed.
They were watching TV quietly when Travis started to angrily slam around the house.
First it was the kitchen cabinets as he tried to find a clean coffee cup.
“They’re in the dishwasher,” I told him. “I just loaded it and ran it this morning, so you’ll either have to open it and wash one, or use your Yeti.”
Travis grumbled something under his breath, but went to the cabinet where I kept his Yeti cups—he had twenty of them, no joke.
Once he got his cup, he walked to the coffee maker, and then started to bitch when the cup wouldn’t fit underneath the Keurig.
He slammed it down on the counter, and I calmly walked over to him and lifted the drip tray from the Keurig, placed his cup underneath the dispenser, and started it.
He said nothing, but I could practically feel his body shaking with withheld fury.
I walked away without a word and turned to the kids.
“Y’all ready, girls?”
Alex popped up first and walked to the door where her backpack was resting against the backdoor, followed shortly by Reggie.
Reggie shoved her feet into her boots.
“Is Daddy coming to see me today?”
I started to reply to her, saying that her father hadn’t communicated with me that he was coming—though he never did. But Travis’ reply to her question had me nearly seeing red.
“Your father’s a jerk, Reg. He’s not going to come, and probably never will.”
Reggie’s head hung, and Travis, thinking he was helping when he wasn’t, ruffled her hair and walked to TJ, gave him a kiss, then walked out of the room.
I walked to where TJ was in his swing, lifted him out, and then walked to the car seat and started buckling him in.
All the while, I counted to twenty in my head so I didn’t follow Travis and give him a piece of my mind.
The least the fucker could’ve done was help me get them in the car…it’s not like getting three kids ready to go in the morning was hard or anything. Like getting up an hour and a half early is just the easiest thing to do when you were sleep deprived. But whatever.
Snapping the last of the buckles, I picked up my sleeping baby boy and groaned at the weight of the car seat with TJ in it.
“Getting big, boy,” I told him.
Grabbing the bottles of milk from the counter for TJ’s meals, I asked Reggie to grab the diaper bag, and we were off.
“Uncle Baylor!” Alex cried out.
She hugged him around the waist, but let him go almost immediately in her rush to get into my Jeep.
Baylor blinked, then focused on me.
“Let me help,” Baylor said.
I was surprised to find him right outside the door, but I didn’t complain when he took the hulking mass of TJ from my arms and expertly deposited him in the car…like his father could’ve done.
“Thank you,” I sighed, placing the rest of the stuff in the front seat. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re riding together to the court hearing.”
I nodded. “Oh, okay.”
The car seat clicked into the base, and then he backed out of the car, winking at Reggie who was waiting for him to move.
Reggie who still looked very upset.
Dammit.
“Reggie, baby,” I whispered. “I’ll call your father and ask him if he has plans to come see you today, okay?”
Her face lit up. “Thank you, Mommy.”
Then she got into the car, and Baylor gave me a sympathetic look.
He knew the story. He also knew, just like everyone else, how sad Reggie got when he didn’t show—which was never.
Yes, she should be used to it by now, but she was a little girl. Little girls wanted their fathers to be in their lives. They didn’t understand when their father no longer wanted anything to do with them, or were too busy at work to come down and see them.
After dropping all the kids off at their prospective locations, I drove back home, and used that time to call Joshua.
He didn’t answer.
What a surprise.
Sometimes I didn’t know why I bothered.
Getting out of the car with a resigned sigh, I walked to the backdoor and barely pushed it open as I bent down to take off my shoes.