Page 93 of Give & Take

“Not always.”

“She always cries at movies,” Nova says with a beleaguered sigh. “Commercials, too.”

“Specially at Christmas,” Aurora says. “’Member that commercial with the old man and the puppy?”

“Aw, a puppy?” I ask.

Lana glares at me before turning back to the screen, her chin crumpled as she tries to hold herself together.

Onscreen, the little lion wins a competition, and all his friends cheer. She claps her hand over her mouth, her eyelashes soaked once again.

“You should sit on Raph’s lap, Mom,” Aurora says from the floor. She doesn’t turn around. “That makes me feel better when I’m sad.”

Lana immediately stiffens. “Thank you honey.”

“I mean, you could,” I whisper.

Lana crosses her arms. I can see the pink creeping up her cheeks.

Then I give her a tug, and haul her up. She laughs, despite herself. Especially when I nuzzle her neck with my nose. But God, my face buried in her hair, the scent of her filling my nostrils, the feeling of her body pressed against mine—maybe this was a bad idea.

But for once, Lana doesn’t seem stiff or uncomfortable at our sudden closeness. She stretches out, resting her head in the crook of my neck, hands curled on my chest, letting out the contented sigh of a house cat. I hold her against me, stroking her hair with one hand, my other splayed over her thigh.

And all I can think is that this—the four of us tucked inside, safe and cozy and together—this is better than any grand adventure.

This is it for me.

Chapter 25

Lana

Close to the end of the movie, I can’t hold on anymore—I have to pee. I get up, telling the kids it’s fine, there’s no need to pause. I could use the emotional reprieve anyway. These stupid movies always wreck me.

When I come back, I freeze, taking in the scene. The girls are now sitting next to each other, Aurora snuggled into her sister. She’s pulled Raph’s hand onto her head in some kind of comfort move.

Raph, meanwhile, is sprawled out like a starfish, mouth slightly agape.

He’s completely passed out. The girls giggle as he lets out a little snore before tilting his face sideways. He’s been tired the past few days, I could tell, but a Raphael version of tired. A kind of doggedness that only seemed to hit when he slowed down. So he just kept going.

Until now.

Raph sleeps right through to the end of the movie. Asthe credits roll, the girls and I lift up his legs so he’s lying sideways on the couch. Nova lays a blanket on him and Aurora even gets him a stuffy—a little penguin she calls Barbara.

He sleeps through Bob from Animal control coming by along with Fred. Bob says he doesn’t think the cat will be back after the frankly traumatic afternoon it had, but insists I take precautions and call him day or night if I’m concerned.

Raphael sleeps through my phone ringing, me talking to Chris, and her insisting on taking the girls off my hands for a while. He sleeps through the girls squealing when they find out, and again when she shows up.

I try to keep them quiet as they gleefully reenact what happened outside with exaggerated hand gestures and roars.

They finish with “An’ now, Raph is passed out on the couch because he wrestled a cougar!”

Chris has to look away to keep from laughing at that.

I narrow my eyes. “He actually wrestled a cougar,” I tell her with an elbow to the ribs.

“You know,” she says, stepping out onto the porch, where I usher the girls outside to get their shoes on. “Dolly says he’s at the Bean Scene almost every night, working on his laptop. All day most weekends, too, when he’s not carpe-ing the diem with Cal. You know they parasail together? Cal’s never done that with anyone else. Says no one else can keep up.”

I frown as we head down the stairs to get Aurora’s booster out of my car. “Really?”

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