Rainy Day Friends Read online

  Cora ignored her. “Listen to me, Marcus. That woman challenges you, and we’ve all been amazed at how she is with the girls. She treats them like adults and they eat it up. She loves them and they love her. So why can’t you just drop your stupid rule and let yourself be happy with her?”

  “Because the last time I dropped my ‘stupid rule,’ I ended up being a single parent to twins, of whom one still isn’t speaking.”

  “Mark,” his mom said softly, looking behind him.

  He turned around and shit, there stood Sierra, silent, staring up at him with those soulful eyes. Fuck. “Hey, munchkin—”

  She whirled and ran off into the house.

  Fan-fucking-tastic. Lanie was gone and now so was Sierra, two of the most important females in his life, hurting because of him.

  He pulled out his phone as he strode into the house, calling Lanie.

  Not only didn’t she answer his call, she ignored it. “Call me back,” he said to her voice mail. “We need to talk.”

  Someone “tsked” and he turned to face his grandpa. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Look, Grandpa, I’ve got a lot on my plate, so either get it off your chest or keep it to yourself.”

  “Women don’t like to be told what to do.”

  No shit. “I didn’t tell her what to do.”

  “You told her that you two needed to talk. You can’t go in like that, barrels blazing. They’ll circle around to your six and stab you dead.”

  Mark’s eye started to twitch. Good. He was going to stroke out. It would save him a lot of trouble.

  “All I’m saying,” his grandpa said, “is that you have to nicely ask if she has time to have a chat. And then you let her come to you. Otherwise, you’re a sitting duck.”

  Shaking his head, he went upstairs and found Samantha in her room playing a game on the kid tablet Mia had bought for her.

  In the meantime, his phone remained ominously silent. “Hey, baby. Where’s Sierra?”

  Samantha, without taking her gaze off the screen, shrugged.

  Mark sighed and then crouched before her, having to put his face between hers and the screen to get her attention. “Hi.”

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Do you remember the other night when we were talking about the difference between adults and children?”

  “Yes. You told me I couldn’t stay up all night like you get to.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because adults are old and have experiences. They get to do what they want. And when I’m old I’ll get to do what I want, but I’m not old yet.”

  Close enough. “Good. Remember that the next time you leave your bed in the middle of the night. Where’s Sierra?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “You always know.”

  Samantha’s gaze skittered to the shut closet door and then back to Mark’s.

  Nearly outsmarted by a pair of six-year-olds.

  He moved to the closet and opened the door. Sierra was lounging in her hamper of dirty clothes, playing on her tablet. She didn’t look up. Like Sam, she had unruly curls—although they were a slightly softer version in the same dark brown color of his own hair—but her unique, quiet, old-soul temperament was all her own. “Hey, you.”

  She was engrossed in her game. Or pretending to be. Mark lifted her out of the hamper and then sat in her place with her in his lap. The hamper strained under his weight and they didn’t quite fit, but he made it work, leaning back against the closet wall with various pieces of clothing hanging in their faces.

  Sierra giggled and, in spite of himself and his worries, he smiled at the sound. “Baby, you need to know that I love you with all my heart.”

  “Hey,” Sam said from the bed.

  “I love both of you with all my heart,” he called out and then looked at Sierra. “I don’t care if you don’t want to talk. That’s okay. But I do care if you choose to never talk again because I miss your voice very much.”

  Sierra stared at him, eyes luminous.

  “So I need to know,” he said softly. “Are you ever going to talk again?”

  She paused, thinking about it before giving him a slow, single nod.

  “Good,” he whispered, jaw pressed against the top of her head.

  Sam came into the closet and climbed into his lap too, and then his heart felt too big for his chest as he hugged them both tight.

  Chapter 17

  Anxiety: Beware.

  Me: Can you be more specific?

  Anxiety: . . .

  After a run to the print shop and a quick side field trip through the ice cream shop, where she got a triple scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough, Lanie shut herself in at her desk.

  After a few minutes, she heard someone coming her way and braced herself for it to be Mark. She would absolutely not be moved by whatever he had to say.

  Probably.

  “Hey,” Mia said. “How’s things?”

  Lanie sighed. “You don’t have to pretend that I didn’t completely mortify myself in front of every one of you Capriottis at lunch.”

  “Oh, that?” Mia shook her head and laughed. “That was nothing. When I got dumped by Sean, I stood up on one of the tables and sobbed. You’ve been here, what, a month and a half? A few weeks before you started, Alyssa and Owen had a huge fight and food was their weapon of choice.”

  “They had an actual food fight?” Lanie asked. “Seriously?”

  “Serious as a heart attack. Someone joined in and put a pie in Mom’s face.”

  “Someone?”

  “Okay, me,” Mia said and winced. “Not my most shining hour. But my point is that what happened today was nothing. No one ended up standing on a table sobbing or with pie in their face.”

  Lanie just stared at her. “You guys are so . . .”

  “Awesome. I think the word you’re looking for is awesome.”

  Lanie laughed softly and turned back to her desk.

  “Listen,” Mia said. “About my brother.”

  Lanie closed her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, I get that. And normally my relationship with my siblings is somewhere between ‘I’ll help you hide the body’ and ‘don’t even breathe in my direction,’ but in this case, I’m with you. And you should know Mark would’ve gone after you today, but Sierra ran off.”

  “What? Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, he found her.” Mia perched a hip on Lanie’s desk. “He’s a great dad.”

  Lanie pretended to be very busy on her computer, grateful it was turned away from Mia because she was literally just watching an apple bounce slowly across the screen. “Yes, he is.”

  “I know my mom asked you to extend your contract that ends in two weeks and stay longer.”

  Two weeks . . . Was that all she had left? Her gaze locked on the bouncing apple. “She did.”

  “And I know you haven’t said yes yet.”

  “Mia—”

  “Look, you fit in here. I think you know that.”

  Lanie didn’t want them to, but the words . . . warmed her. Growing up, she’d been extremely aware of being different from her parents. And different hadn’t been good. Never fitting in with her own people had scarred her, she knew this. Hearing that she fit in here was both amazing and terrifying.

  “We want you to stay,” Mia said. “All of us want that.”

  “Yes,” Lanie said, still staring at her computer. “For the sake of the girls.”

  “Well, of course. They’ve been through hell and we’re still trying to heal them from that, but this is more than just about them. It’s about the rest of us. And you. We all like you, Lanie. Very much. You feel like one of us.”

  Lanie didn’t know how to react to this. She wasn’t good with emotions outside of her anxieties, and she sure as hell had no idea how to deal with them. She’d promised herself not to get involved. A promise she’d broken because she had gotten involved, and she had no idea what