Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
“He’s her husband. That’s probably what a good husband should do. My dad wouldn’t do it for my mom, but we both know he’s an asshole.”
“Colten, don’t say that.”
“I’m going to be a better husband than him.”
“You’d change your wife’s adult diaper?”
My nose wrinkled. I couldn’t imagine that. I had never changed a diaper before. “I mean … maybe. If I loved her.”
“Don’t marry her if you don’t love her.” Josie rolled her eyes and laughed.
I grabbed a second cookie. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I know. I hope I don’t need anyone’s help. I want to be like my other grandma. After my grandpa died, she did everything. Mowed the lawn. Fixed a leaky toilet. She’s pretty awesome.”
Sometimes I wanted to be Josie. She had a great family and so much confidence.
Me?
I had an asshole dad. A stupid brother. And a mother who loved me, but she was emotionally whacked out because of my dad.
“I promised my parents I would never ask you this, but …” I eased into a question I’d been meaning to ask her for a long time but never got the nerve.
“Ask me what?”
She set the lid on the container of cookies, and I pressed it down before she had the chance to not ask me.
“Did your mom cheat on your dad?”
“What?” Her head whipped backward.
“Not recently. I mean years ago. You said your mom had sex with another guy, and that’s why your skin color is a little darker. Did she cheat on him?”
“No.” Her face wrinkles.
“Then why do you have a different dad?”
She stares at her cookie for several seconds. “I don’t. My dad is my dad. He’s not my biological dad, but he’s real.”
“Is that what your parents told you?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t ask any more questions?”
“Of course I did, but they said it wasn’t important until I get older.”
“That’s weird. How old?”
“They said when I’m an adult it will make sense.”
I had a million questions. My biggest question was how she could be fine with them not telling her the truth until she was an adult. I hated when my parents lied to me. Josie, however, wasn’t like me or anyone else for that matter. One minute she was too curious for her own good, on the verge of getting in trouble, and the next minute, she seemed to not care about something as interesting, and maybe a little crazy, like the fact that the chief wasn’t her real—biological—dad, yet her mom supposedly didn’t have an affair.
Josephine Watts processed everything in life a little differently than other kids—and maybe most other humans.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Josie …” My mom’s eyebrows jump up her forehead after she unlocks and opens her front door. Her gaze shifts to the small suitcase at my side. “What are you doing here?” She steps aside to let me into the entry.
“I needed to get away.” I slip off my shoes and set my suitcase by the stairs.
“Away from what?” She eyes me suspiciously.
“Colten.”
“Trouble in paradise?” She heads into the kitchen to get food. That’s how she has always greeted guests. A drink and something sweet like cookies, brownies, or lemon bars if she’s feeling generous toward my dad.
I get two steps into the kitchen and stop. A six-hour drive in silence, my phone shut off to keep from hearing the chime of his texts and calls, no recollection of anything specific that I saw, heard, or thought for those six hours … and now it hits me.
It. Hits. Me.
Tears sting my eyes while everything from my throat to the pit of my stomach seizes up into a tight knot of despair. I turn away from her and swallow hard, pinching the corners of my eyes to keep control.
I lost him … I lost the boy next door.
“Are you still having visions and dreams?”
I clear my throat and take a deep breath while finding my way to the kitchen table before my knees give out on me. I haven’t felt this hopeless and devastated since … well, forever. “I am.”
“How did your trip to California go?”
I clear my throat, fighting for every last morsel of composure. “How do you know about that?”
Mom sets a tray of brownies next to me along with a cherry-lime sparkling water. “Well, it would have been nice to have heard it from you.” She gives me a little scowl. “But I had to hear it from Becca. We’ve been keeping in touch, and Colten told her. I guess he shares stuff with his mom.”
Some stuff. Mom’s not lecturing me on not telling her that I accepted his proposal a while back, so he must not have told his mom either. Smart. He sensed the wedding might not happen.
“Remember that time you and dad were in New Orleans right before you got married? You told me you had your palm read by a psychic. Dad thought it was ridiculous, but you believed her, and since then, everything has come to fruition?”