Folk Around and Find Out (Good Folk: Modern Folktales #2)(123)

We jumped apart and twisted around, searching. Sonya appeared a moment later, rubbing her eye and looking sleepy. “Can someone lay me down?” she asked around a yawn.

“Don’t you want pizza?” Hank asked, scooping her up. “We’re just about to order it.”

Sonya cupped his face with her little hand. “I’m tired. Can I have it for breakfast?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, Hank turned and walked Sonya toward the back hallway, saying, “Of course. I’ll save you some. What book are we reading tonight?”

“A Wrinkle in Time,” she said, her head falling to rest on his shoulder. “Will you do the voices?”

I clutched my heart, my eyes stinging once again, my emotions rooting me in place as I watched and listened to them go.

“I always do the voices,” he said. A moment later, I heard him ask, “Hey, did you brush your teeth?”

Staring at the spot where they’d disappeared together, I waited until the urge to cry passed.

One day, I hoped Hank would carry Sonya off to bed, or teach Kimmy a lesson about friendship, or read the newspaper with Joshua, or toss Frankie in the air to make him laugh, and it wouldn’t pull tears out of me. But for now and for the foreseeable future, I rejoiced in the wonder.

I basked in the feeling of falling more deeply in love with this man every time he was simply himself.





EPILOGUE





HANK





“Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.”





NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE





—Many Years Later—





“Have you seen Tommy?”

Pasting on my best impression of innocent ignorance, I shrugged and asked a question instead of lying. “Did you check the boys’ hotel room?”

Kimmy leaned her hip against the doorframe, her body half-in, half-out of the suite and mostly hidden by the door. “Momma said he was probably with you. We haven’t seen him and he’s the only one who doesn’t have on his suit.”

“How do you know he doesn’t have his suit on if you haven’t seen him? I’m sure it’ll be fine.” It better be fine. “I didn’t see you for breakfast. Why don’t you come in and eat?”

“I skipped breakfast. What’s all this?” She abandoned her post by the door and marched into the room. The bathrobe she wore, which was tied at the front, swished around her ankles. Hands on her hips, Kimmy’s blue eyes swept over the long table. “You ordered pizza?”

Over the years, I’d split many pizzas with my kids. I’d split so many pizzas, you’d think by now I would be tired of pizza.

I wasn’t. Most of my happiest memories involved pizza.

“Yeah.” I grinned. “Hungry?”

Kimmy’s expression flattened. “Dad, the reception is in three hours. You know they’re feeding us. You paid for it.”

“But . . .” I swept my arms toward the table, hoping to entice her. “Pizza.”

Charlotte and I served pizza at our wedding reception. The day I’d officially adopted Kimmy, Joshua, Sonya, and Frankie, we’d had a big pizza party. When Charlotte came home from the hospital with Tommy—our youngest—Kimmy had made homemade pizza for everyone.

We ate pizza the day after Christmas every year, after every big game or school play, every graduation, every time we moved someone into a dorm room, and every time we moved someone out of a dorm room.

And when Sonya had introduced us to Alessandro last year, the fella she was about to marry today, we’d met them at a pizza restaurant.

Kimmy—a grown-ass woman with a few Ivy League degrees under her belt, a string of broken hearts in her wake—wrinkled her nose at me like she used to do when she was eight. “Why are you always ordering pizza? Whenever we do anything, you’re ordering pizza.”

I stood straighter, smoothing a hand down my suit front.

I liked pizza. I liked that I knew precisely what each of my kids wanted on their pizza and what they’d pick off it when I insisted we all share.

Kimmy wanted spicy sausage, pepperoni, and bacon; Joshua liked the simplicity of tomato and basil; Sonya preferred mushrooms, onions, and olives; Frankie ate everything, he didn’t care as long as it was food; and Tommy had a taste for feta cheese, tomato, and spinach.

But I wasn’t going to tell her that.

So I said, “Because it’s delicious. And it’s a family tradition. And I said so.”

Kimmy’s eyes narrowed. I narrowed mine right back until we were both squinty-smiling at each other.

Our wonderful moment was interrupted by Frankie barreling through the door and shouting, “We got it!” His arms raised in the air in a victory pose.

Kimmy turned and faced her brothers as they bolted into the room, but then stopped short upon seeing their sister.

“Got what?” she asked.

I made a slicing motion across my neck and bared my teeth at the boys.

Both Frankie and Joshua rocked back on their heels once they realized their error, attention darting between me and Kimmy.

“Uh . . .” Joshua shoved his hands in his pockets, his shifty green eyes a travesty to con artists and fibbers everywhere. “We . . . got . . . drinks.”