Page 105 of You Can Make Me
Something twinged in my chest.
“Where’d you find this?” I asked, taking it from him.
The Magic 8 Ball. The plastic menace. The infuriating oracle. The witches had saddled me with it, joking that it was more my speed, and you know? It actually brought me a little comfortduring the months when I’d waited to see whether Cooper would ever come back to me after his trauma.
“It was here in my toys,” he said, with his whole happy little chest. The kid was nothing but love and light. I had no reason to think anything nefarious was at work. Maybe Cooper had put it there.
“Wow. I used to have one just like this. Sometimes I would ask it questions when I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“I know. It tells me things, too.”
I started to ask what things when Cooper blew into the kitchen dressed in a cornflower-blue suit, yellow dress shirt, and a paisley bow tie, looking like the most sophisticated gay professor that ever professored. And damn, those pants hugged his ass in the most mouthwatering way.
“You put this in his toys, babe?”
I held it up for him, and he stopped in his tracks.
His eyes went wide and he shook his head.“I haven’t seen that since?—”
“Me either.”
We stared at each other for a minute, and then laughed nervously.
“Hop on up here,” I said to Miles. “Grandpa Frank’s famous smoothies are coming right up.”
“Great-Granddad Frank says he’s the one who came up with the smoothies, not Grandpa.”
Cooper dropped his metal water jug on the counter with a clang and struggled to right it before ice went everywhere. “Sweetie, what did you just say?”
“Great-Granddad Frank. He works at a carnival. I see him in my sleeps.”
Miles wiggled back and forth, Miranda slapped her hands on the tray of her high chair, and Cooper and I stood frozen, staring at our son.
Cooper broke first. He cleared his throat. “What does he say when you see him?”
“He tells me about Mr. Ame and the True Bay Door and his Talking Board. And someone who plays big loud machine music. And he tells me aboutyou, Daddy Denny! How you came to see him at the carnival, and about a king named Rodney and a porpoise.”
A tear ran down Cooper’s cheek, and he stared at me, imploring.
“Daddy Denny? I can have my smoothie now?”
I shivered and moved over to the counter. I grabbed the granola from the cupboard and put my hand on Cooper’s back.
“It’s going to be okay, baby.” I leaned close to his ear and whispered, “We ended up together because of bizarre circumstances. We got our kids in strange and unusual ways. We need to be ready for weird shit to come out of their mouths.”
“Den? Did you…did you meet my granddad there? Do you remember?”
I’d tried really hard to remember what happened when I was at the carnival, but unlike Dane and Kal, my memories remained hazy. Cooper thought that was likely on purpose, so that I couldn’t tell him anything he shouldn’t know. I recalled pestering Ame, pleading with him to bring me back to Cooper, but that was it. There was something familiar about this, though.
A twinge behind my eye made me suck in a breath, and I reached for the counter. I breathed through the pain, hoping it would go away like it had all the other times.
And I saw his granddad’s face, only it wasn’t at the carnival.
“I have a memory, or maybe it was a dream. You were a kid in your granddad’s living room, and he had you watching the Rodney King trial verdict. The riots. He said you needed to be a witness. He fought with your mom about it.”
Cooper nodded slowly and inhaled. “Right. I remember. I saw it when Dane and I used the board. I’m sure…Miles probably heard me and Mom talking about Granddad.”
I didn’t want to correct him, point out that our kid specifically mentioned the carnival.
