In a Book Club Far Away(29)

“All right, then. I can’t wait. I’ll call you soon.”

“All right. Bye.”

When they hung up, Regina squealed. Then she jumped in place, then she did the running man.

Genevieve laughed. “You’re funny.”

“Why, thank you, thank you very much,” she said, mimicking Elvis.

Genevieve’s eyebrows plummeted, and she simply said, “I’m hungry.”

Regina sighed and flipped the watch on her wrist. “Oh, it is lunchtime. Let’s take a look at the manual, shall we?” Regina approached the one-inch binder with the spine labeled All about Genevieve. Parts were sectioned with tabs marked “About Me” and “My Schedule” and “Important People,” and each topic was filled with typed instructions for Regina.

In the “About Me” section was a list of favorite foods, separated by types: entrées, fruits, vegetables, dessert, and with a separate section for pasta and rice. “You and me and carbs. Am I right?” She scrolled a finger down and stopped at something she was excellent at making. “Pancit? You eat pancit?”

“Uh-huh!” Genevieve piled a round piece of dough onto another one, and then smooshed it down with a palm.

“Let’s see what we have for ingredients.” Regina rummaged through the pantry. “Hmm. Instant mac and cheese? Sacrilegious. Oh, here’s a package of vermicelli. Everything else, we can wing! Time me, baby girl. Twenty minutes.”

But it took much longer than twenty minutes to make the pancit. Regina had forgotten how much toddlers got under one’s feet. Every seemingly innocuous object was suddenly life-threatening: the under-the-counter microwave Genevieve stuck one of her metal toys in, the garbage can with the step handle that almost slapped her in the face before Regina edged her out of the way. By the time Regina got the bib on the little girl and settled her in the high chair, she was utterly humbled.

That explained the instant mac and cheese.

Still, watching Genevieve eat, a sadness came over Regina at how fast time had flown. Yes, she’d survived the toddler years with Miko—thank goodness—with the help of her mother, and Logan, who ended up being an excellent co-parent despite their divorce, but Miko was nine. Nine! Soon, he would be out of elementary school and then moving out somewhere possibly states away. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she punched at her phone. She and her son had texted several times that morning already, but she wanted to hear his voice.

“Hello,” Miko said when he answered the phone.

Instantly, Regina felt better. “How are you? Did you eat this morning?”

“Yes, Lola made me my favorite breakfast. Pop-Tarts.”

“Wow, yum.” Of course her mother allowed Pop-Tarts. When Regina and her brothers were kids, her mother made eggs every single day. Protein for muscle, was what she would say without fail, convinced that cereal and pancakes and waffles were made of sugar.

Gloria hadn’t been wrong. But it wasn’t fun nor was it nearly as delicious.

Silence descended on his side of the world, and in the background Regina heard the faint, quintessential sound of lightsabers being wielded. “Anak, are you playing video games?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay—” Their last conversation had been less than twelve hours ago—she’d let this go. “Give the phone to Lola.”

“Okay. Lola!” A bedraggled scream pierced through the phone, and Regina distanced it from her ear. Jeez.

“Regina?”

“Hey, Ma, how are things?”

“Fine. Nothing’s changed since last night, but Alexis is here. She wants to talk to you.”

“Um, okay.” It wasn’t a surprise that Alexis was visiting the Castro residence, because Regina’s mother was grandmother to everyone. When Alexis greeted her, Regina asked, “What’s up?”

“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop off invoices and receipts from the last event.” Her voice dipped at the tail end of the sentence.

“Thank you.”

“And I was hoping—do you have time to talk right now?”

“Yes, actually, I do.” She and Alexis had skipped their monthly meeting in her haste to come to Virginia, and like a true soldier, her business manager was insistent on following up.

Regina hated talking about money. Besides facing the fact that she would soon have to make a decision about The Perfect Day Catering, money issues felt like a shameful secret no one should know about. It had been a prevalent pressure in her daily life as a child. Though not discussed around her mother’s dinner table, Regina and her brothers had known there was little to go around, primarily as a result of their parents’ divorce.

“We’re crossing the three-year mark soon,” Alexis said.

“Is it that time already?” Regina said airily, though a heaviness settled in her chest. It was slightly eased by Genevieve, who was eating the heck out of her pancit, loving every single strand of noodle, every morsel of green bean and carrot.

But Regina hadn’t forgotten what she’d said to Alexis almost three years prior. She had been several years out after separating from the Army and Logan, with a child in tow, living back at home with her mother. With her savings from active-duty service—thank God she hadn’t shared finances with Logan while married—she’d invested in her own business with one stipulation: that she’d give it her all, and if The Perfect Day Catering didn’t feel profitable or promising after three years, she’d walk away. She’d estimated that in three years, she would feel the financial burden of debt, and sure enough, as the months passed with fewer clients than she’d anticipated, she was starting to be crushed by it. Her only solution was cash flow either in the form of clients or investment, and neither seemed to be on the horizon.