Then I heard more laughter in the background and Jim-Billy back at my ear.

“Everything’s okay,” he declared.

Then he disconnected.

I rolled my eyes, touched the button and put the phone down. Then I smiled at it on the counter.

Tate and Jonas walked in from outside and Jonas went right to the cake and stuck his finger in it, swiping off frosting and then putting his finger in his mouth.

This was the third time he’d done this.

“Keep doing that, honey, you’ll get cake and no frosting and what good is that?” I warned (also for the third time).

“Maybe you can make more frosting?” Jonas suggested.

“No, but I can cut the cake so you get the non-frosting bits and Tate and I get the yummy with frosting bits.”

“Yummy?” Jonas asked, his eyes dancing.

“You’ve tasted the frosting,” my head tilted to the cake, “and you’ve come back for more. You know it’s yummy.”

“No one says yummy,” Jonas informed me.

“I do,” I informed him back.

“You’re hot but you’re also a little goofy,” he returned and grinned.

I looked at Tate. “Can you ask your son to stop calling me hot?”

“Calls ‘em as he see ‘em, babe,” Tate replied, grinning like his son.

“He’s ten,” I reminded Tate.

Tate shrugged.

I looked between them both and I did this twice.

Then I went back to the Rice-A-Roni and I did this wondering if Tate fathered a child or he’d been cloned.

* * * * *

Dinner consumed, we were eating cake and ice cream (and I hadn’t given Jonas the non-frosting bits because I was a pushover) at the dining room table when Tate’s phone rang.

I noticed Jonas’s head twist quickly when it did and I also noticed his body get tight.

My eyes moved slowly to Tate to see he was looking at the display on his phone, his face hard, then he looked at me.

“A minute, babe,” he said, pushed his chair back, tousled Jonas’s hair and walked to the sliding glass door, flipping his phone open, putting it to his ear and answering with an impatient, “Yeah?”

He slid the door open, closed it behind him, turned right and disappeared.

I looked to Jonas to see he was no longer eating his cake like it was the best thing he’d ever tasted like he’d done his entire dinner. He was shoving it around and slopping melted ice cream on it.

“You okay, Jonas?” I asked, his head came up and he straightened.

“Yup,” he answered, the lightness of his tone forced.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Sure I’m sure,” he answered.

“You want more cake?”

“Nah.”

“You want to help me with the dishes?”

He looked at the kitchen as if it and any activity you could do in it was foreign to him then at me. “All right,” he agreed uncertainly.

We got up and took the plates to the kitchen. I rinsed, Jonas loaded the dishwasher. I did this while looking out the window to the deck about seven hundred times. I couldn’t see Tate and I also couldn’t hear him.

“She does this,” Jonas stated and my eyes went from the window to him.

“Sorry, honey?”

“Mom, she calls Dad when I’m here. Rags on him.”

Oh.

My.

God.

He knew that? How?

The only way was for her to tell him (because I knew Tate wouldn’t) or for him to figure it out (which I knew Jonas could, he was a smart kid and kids noticed a lot more than adults gave them credit for, or at least that was what I heard).

“Um…” I mumbled.

“It’s okay, he’s used to it.”

It was not okay. Of course, this was not my place to say so I kept my mouth shut.

“I’ll tell the judge I wanna live here,” Jonas announced unexpectedly and my eyes shot to him.

“Sorry?”

“Can you tell Dad that?” he asked.

I took in a breath and wondered what to do in this situation. Then I decided most parents probably wondered what to do in a variety of situations that occurred daily and they went with their gut. So I decided to go with my gut, grabbed a kitchen towel, wiped my hands, tossed the towel on the counter, leaned down and shoved the drawer into the dishwasher then closed the door. Then I curled my fingers around his shoulder and moved us both so we were leaning sideways against the counter.

“Do you know –?” I started.

“About the papers?” he asked and I nodded. “Yeah, she talks about it all the time. She’s pretty pi… I mean, upset.”

I bit my lip.

Then I went with my gut again and cupped the underside of his jaw with my hand, tipping his head up to me and leaning slightly down to get close to him.

“Yes, baby, I’ll tell him,” I spoke gently. “What I’d like to know is, why won’t you?”

Jonas stared up at me, his eyes wide, his lips parted and something about his astonished look set me on edge. He acted old for his age, held intelligent conversations (when he wasn’t talking about milfs that was). He was young but he wasn’t stupid or childlike.

He looked like a child right then, vulnerable with a hint of innocent wonder.

Then I figured out what set me on edge.

I guessed that Neeta didn’t talk gently to her son and she didn’t touch him gently either. He’d never felt it, at least not from a woman or, at least, not on any kind of normal basis. The other night, when she referred to him, she called him her “kid”. I’d thought nothing of it at the time but now it seemed detached. She didn’t call him “my son” or “my boy”. Just “my kid”.

This beautiful child was just her kid.

My heart turned over again as my stomach clenched and I had to take a cautious breath so he wouldn’t hear it and I could still control the tears that threatened.

He recovered and whispered, “She finds out, she’ll freak.”

“Finds out you want to live with your Dad?”

He nodded.

Of its own accord, though I didn’t do a thing to stop it, my hand slid from his jaw, across his soft cheek, over his thick hair and then down to curve around the side of his neck.

“And she’ll freak if she knows you’re willing to talk to the judge?”

“That and that I told Dad. But if she finds out and I say I didn’t say it to him, she’ll believe me.”

“She will?”

“I don’t lie to her.”