Page 76 of Lies and Lullabies
“Oh, sure they do,” Jonas said as the waitress came back. He raised his coffee mug toward her. “The little skeeter would like pancakes, bacon, and strawberries,” he said. “Can you make that happen?”
“Sure!” the waitress practically yelled, pouring coffee into our mugs. “Let me get rid of this pot before I take the rest of your order.”
“Take your time.”
When she went away, Kira gave him a smile. “I guess you can get whatever you want from Miss Perky.”
Jonas only shrugged. “The recognition thing is mostly a pain in the backside. So I have to take the good with the bad.”
The waitress came back with crayons for Vivi. She took our order and scampered off. I had no doubt that all her other tables would suffer while we received excellent service.
A big shadow fell over our table, and I tried to keep my face impassive when I saw who it was.
“Morning, all,” Ethan said. “Everybody doing well?”
“Yes, Mom,” Jonas said.
“Don’t sass me, boy. I’ve done a lot of work for you already today.” He set two envelopes down on the table along with an itinerary that was marked up in green pen. “I found three dates when you can get away for two days or more. The first one is this Sunday night.”
Jonas picked up the sheet. “Awesome.”
“But you have to charter the return trips. Because I will not pace around a venue praying for your flight delays to resolve themselves.”
“Fine.”
“Ben has his panties in a wad about the European tour dates. You need to call him from the bus. We have to make our load-in time, because the New York guys are always cranky, and they’ll fine you if we’re late. The bus leaves in…” He looked at his watch. “An hour and fifteen.”
Jonas flinched. “Okay. Got it.”
Ethan swept his eyes over the entire table, noting Vivi hard at work with her crayons. Then he ducked his big body down quickly and kissed me on the neck, before turning around and walking away.
As I watched, Kira’s eyes bugged out of her head. But Jonas only snickered into his coffee cup.
“Interesting,” my sister squeaked.
I just shrugged, my face burning.
“So…” Jonas cleared his throat. “Can we talk about money for a second? I know it’s not your favorite topic.”
“Now is not a great time,” Kira said quietly, tipping her chin to indicate that they shouldn’t talk money in front of Vivi, even if she was busy with her crayons.
“I can help with that,” I offered. Kira wouldn’t like this maneuver, but I didn’t want her to duck the money discussion forever. “Hey, Vivster?” My niece looked up. “Want to see Elmo on my phone?” Vivi gave a squeal of happiness as I pulled up the video I had squirreled away for just such emergencies. I dug my earphones out of my pocket and handed them to Vivi.
“Really, Adam?” Kira asked.
“Emergencies only,” I said, handing the phone to Vivi, who inserted the ear buds with more familiarity than was optimal. “Okay.” I nodded at Jonas. “You have six minutes.”
“That will do.” Jonas picked up one envelope and passed it to Kira.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Four years of back child support.”
With a wary glance at him, she opened the envelope. Her eyes grew large when she looked inside. “Jeez! That’s almost a hundred thousand dollars! I can’t—”
“Take the money, Kira,” Jonas pressed. “It’s yours. In fact, your lawyer here will probably explain to you that this is just the state’s figure. A judge might give you a lot more.”
“Dude,” I objected. “Your new lawyer would piss himself to hear you say that. In fact, what lawyer would let you write that check without a paternity test? I can’t believe he’d do that.”
