Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 103428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 517(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 517(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Kitty lowered her voice and leaned forward once more. “One more thing—I’ve changed his diaper. You won’t be disappointed. Sometimes zigging and zagging not only finds you a new path to take, but it makes getting there a hell of a lot of fun, too.”
• • •
Merrick swiped his cell phone off. That was his third call to the airline since this morning, and it was now going on three in the afternoon. “They finally have my luggage in Atlanta.”
“Oh good. Are they delivering it?”
He shook his head. “Not if I want it sooner than one to three days. They’re backed up, so I’m going to have to go to the airport to pick it up.”
“Oh, that stinks. Do you want me to take a ride with you so you don’t have to park? I can drop you at the terminal and circle while you pick it up and come back.” I looked through the sliding glass doors that led to the lanai. Kitty was sitting with Marvin, both her casted and booted feet up on his lap. They laughed about something. “I think her stud muffin can take care of her while we’re gone.”
Merrick groaned. “Please don’t use the words stud and grandmother in the same sentence.”
“Oh yeah. Of course.” I grinned. “Do you prefer I call him her rocket ride or boy toy?”
“You’re going to be over my knee again in about two seconds.”
Does he think that’s a deterrent? Just the opposite.
Marvin slid the glass door open. “I’m going to cook the four of us some dinner tonight—a stick-to-your-ribs, southern meal.” He looked back and forth between us. “You’re not those types who only eat rabbit food, are you?”
I smiled. “No, neither of us is vegetarian.”
“Good.”
“Marv, are you planning on staying here this afternoon?” I asked. “Merrick needs to run to the airport to get his luggage, and I was thinking of taking the ride with him, but I don’t want to leave Kitty unattended.”
“I’ll be here taking care of my girl all day. She’s got a Zoom call with one of the new relatives she found on Ancestry later, and I like to read the Sunday paper from cover to cover. So take your time. It’s a beautiful day out there.”
I nodded with a smile. “Okay, thanks, Marvin.”
A little while later, Merrick and I borrowed Kitty’s car and headed to the airport. He drove while I looked out the window, feeling a lot of emotions. When we came to the Buckhead exit, I pointed. “I would be living somewhere out there if things hadn’t derailed between me and Christian.”
Merrick’s eyes slanted to me before returning to the road. “You were going to live down here?”
I nodded. “Christian is from Atlanta. I think I told you we met when we were both students down here. We moved up to New York so he could work for a few years at his family’s corporate headquarters, and I did my internship there. But he wanted to move back after our wedding. His company has a huge research-and-development facility down here that he was being trained to run.”
“Is that what you wanted? To live down here, I mean?”
I shook my head. “Not really. I like it down here, but I love New York, and I wanted to be near my sister. I always imagined we’d have kids at the same time and they’d grow up together.”
“Yet you were going to move anyway?”
I shrugged. “Christian hated New York. He hated apartment life and not having a big yard, and he absolutely loathed public transportation and busy sidewalks. Both his parents are originally from Atlanta. They divorced when he was five, and he mostly lived with his mother after that. His father relocated to work in the family business in New York, so he went back and forth. I think part of the reason he hates the city so much is because of what it represents to him—his family being torn apart. It’s easier to blame something other than your parents.”
“How long were you two together?”
“Three-and-a-half years.”
Merrick nodded.
“What about you? Did you always live in the city?”
“I spent a week every summer down here with Kitty and my mom. But yeah, born and raised in New York. My mom went to college in the city and never came back. She was one of the few women on the trading floor in her day. She passed away six years ago of breast cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“What about your dad?”
“He retired to Florida last year. Never remarried after my mom. My sister lives down there and has kids, so he moved not too far from her.”
“You were…engaged once, too, right?”
Merrick’s eyes flashed to me quickly before returning to the road. His lips pursed. “You like to dig around, don’t you?”
“It’s an occupational hazard. I ask questions and try to fit the pieces together to see the whole puzzle.”