Page 60 of Hearts in Circulation
Nova laughed, and when he stepped out of the laundry room, closing the door behind him, it was to his four sisters’ smiling faces.
“Oh yeah.” Constance tapped her upturned lips. “I definitely see a change.”
Levi willed his expression to stone. He’d already endured the third degree because of the kittens. He needed a littlebreak before another round. “Excuse me. I need to check on dinner.”
Blessedly, his sisters let him escape to the back deck without following him. Both the chicken breasts and zucchini spears were finished cooking when he checked. With a pair of metal tongs, he moved the golden meat to a plate, happy with the uniformed char marks and the smell of rosemary, thyme, and garlic that he’d seasoned the chicken with.
Trinity had just finished setting up his outdoor picnic table with a birthday-inspired tablecloth and festive paper plates and cutlery. Aliyah and his mom were tacking up aHappy Birthdaysign to the railing of the deck. Levi put the plate of chicken on the table. Once he retrieved the salad he’d made earlier from the refrigerator, along with a pitcher of lemonade, they could eat.
“Oh! We forgot the balloons.” Trinity rushed back through the house toward the minivan. When she came back, a half dozen balloons floated around her head. She tied the string to a folding chair Levi had placed at the head of the table. “There.”
“Need any help with anything?” Mom offered as she walked into the kitchen with Levi.
He closed the refrigerator with his hip. “No, this is the last of it.”
“I’ll tell the girls and your father to wash up.”
Levi carried the rest of the food to the table, then surveyed the buffet, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. Chicken, salad, zucchini ... oh! He’d baked some pre-made dinner rolls and left them warming in a bowl under a tea towel. He turned to head back into the kitchen, then stopped in his tracks before he barreled into his mom, who’d planted herself in the doorway.
“Levi, why are there two toothbrushes in your bathroom?” Her voice didn’t sound accusatory as much as it did confused.
Constance and Nova eyed each other, then dashed back into the house. To look for more clues, no doubt.
Levi rubbed at the back of his neck. “Someone was stranded in Turkey Grove because of the rockslide. They stayed with me until the road opened back up.”
His mom’s eyes softened as she looked at him, her smile approving. “That was real sweet of you, hon.”
“It was a woman!” Nova’s voice cried with glee from the direction of the bedrooms. Constance marched down the hall, carrying the laundry basket full of folded clothes in her hands as evidence.
Levi groaned and rolled his eyes. “Constance, those areyourclothes,” he tried to deflect. But Pandora’s box had opened, and there was no closing the lid on it again.
Dad took a seat at the table. “You girls leave the poor man alone.” He gave Levi a sympathetic look before stabbing a zucchini spear with his fork and setting it on his plate. “Sorry, kid. You being the only boy ... well...” He shrugged. But didn’t that say it all anyway?
“Why do you think it was a woman?” Trinity asked.
Constance had set the laundry basket down in the living room, and now every female in his family gathered around it like it was the queen’s jewels on display.
Levi sighed and took a seat across from his dad. “Should we just go ahead and eat without them? The food’s going to get cold.”
His dad snorted. “And incur your mother’s wrath? I don’t think so. No, what you need to do is go ahead and surrender now and promise to answer all their questions if they just come to the table. You can call it my birthday gift.” He winked at him.
“I know those are my clothes,” Constance replied, “but these have been rewashed. They smell like they just came out of the dryer, and they’ve been here almost a month.”
“Oh, so you think this mystery woman had to borrow your clothes while she was here, then did laundry before she left?” Aliyah asked. “And Levi didn’t call first to ask your permission?”
“He knows I wouldn’t have cared,” Constance said dismissively. “Especially if the woman didn’t have anything else to wear.”
Levi hung his head. The muscles in his neck were starting to tense.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact he let a stranger stay with him in his fortress of solitude instead of foisting them off on someone else in town.” That was Nova’s disbelieving insight.
“Is it more or less surprising if the stranger was a woman?” Trinity posed the question.
No one spoke for the beat of three whole seconds.
“Do you think...?”
“No, it can’t be.”
