The Long Way Home (Corps Security #6)
Harper Sloan
“Save Me” by BTS
“Livi.” My beautiful niece’s sing-song voice breaks through the silence in our condo, pulling my attention away from cleaning the kitchen island clutter and over to her inquisitive gaze. “You’re going to be super-duper unhappy when you see what the sky looks like today.” She cocks her head to the side in an overexaggerated jerk of the chin toward the full-length wall of windows showcasing our spacious balcony and the stunning city view beyond.
“That bad, hmm?” I question with a smile, loving that she still does this as a part of her routine in the mornings. Every morning since she could stand, she’s pressed her adorable little chubby cheeked face against the glass to check the weather. She’s so cute … even though the smudges on the glass she leaves behind will drive me insane, I can’t imagine my morning not starting off with a Riley weather report.
To this day, it still shocks me that she is such an intuitive five-year-old. Much more so than my sister and I ever were at her age. If I didn’t know better, I would say she could feel my moods almost as if they were her own. However, it wouldn’t take an empathic soul to know and understand how much her aunt’s moods are affected by weather like this. Thankfully, she doesn’t understand just how much it impacts me or the actual cause. To her young and innocent eyes, it makes me all the more lovable.
“I’ll have you know, little bean of mine, I have the best reason to be upset with my pal Mother Nature. Her rainy day messes up our plans.”
Her little button nose turns up, and she purses her lips.
“Never fret, pet … I have a feeling that, together, we’ll be able to find all sorts of fun adventures to go on. We may miss a day outside, but who wants to walk around with boots full of puddles and wrinkly toes? You don’t like wrinkly toes, do you?” Her giggles bubble up her throat, and she covers her mouth.
I give her a wink and think back to my morning when I realized it would be a gloomy, depressing day. My energy always seems to wane on days like this, making it almost impossible to motivate myself. I heard the sounds of raindrops dancing across the glass windows well before I was even fully awake this morning. For a moment, I couldn’t even force myself to open my eyes, let alone get out of bed. If it wasn’t for Riley being in my life and the need to get her to school on time without getting yelled at again, I likely would have just accepted defeat and waved the white flag. Unfortunately, responsibility won out, so here we are.
It’s been a slow-moving morning ever since. It will take some effort for this not to be a down in the grump’s kind of day.
She laughs softly, my serious little Riley bean, and turns away from the window. Her eyes assess me the whole walk across the room, seemingly slicing right through me and seeing way too much. I’ve always thought she was an old soul, wise beyond her years, stuck inside her tiny little body.
I watch out of the corner of my eye with a smile tipping my lips as she huffs while climbing up on the stool at the island. She sits back with her arms crossed over her chest, watching me with an expression laced with pure exasperation.
Wearing a small smile, I move around the kitchen island toward the wall of cabinets next to the fridge and reach up to open the one where we store the bowls.
As much as I prefer her getting a warm and well-balanced meal to start the day, you can count on one thing with rainy days like this … we always have cereal for breakfast. However, the overthinker in me pauses before I can get my fingers on the bowl, realizing she doesn’t hate rainy days like I do and might prefer a nice warm breakfast of her favorites instead: cheesy scrambled eggs and cinnamon sugar toast.
“What are you in the mood for this morning, bean? Cereal or would you prefer something warmer on this bleak morning to soothe that wee little wild dancing soul of yours?” I ask, turning my head slightly to look at her over my shoulder.
I almost lose control and laugh when she contemplates my question with a fever pitch of seriousness, forgetting her judging eyes moments before changing plans, and decisively nods to herself after making up her mind. I wait patiently for the little wise one to inform me of her vast knowledge of life, which I’m sure is coming.
“I would have picked cereal, but I suppose cheesy eggs might be nice this morning, Livi. You know, you shouldn’t be thinking about cereal if you want to stay warm in the rain. Which is why eggs and toast should be our pick,” she responds, her proper demeanor that of someone way older and more mature than the five-year-old little princess that she is. How she’s able to channel so much sass and seriousness at the same time is beyond me. It does take a herculean effort to keep my smile to myself, though.
I didn’t have a great childhood, so it’s always been important that Riley’s not be anything close to what her mom and I endured. When I was growing up, in my family, any kind of behavior that wasn’t silent was frowned upon. From the moment my sister and I spoke our first word, we were in finishing school training with the strictest of teachers. Poise and perfection, that was the key. It was drilled into our heads that we must never be children, but mature always, even at Riley’s age. Riley’s childhood experience, compared to her mother and me, has been nothing even remotely close to resembling what we lived through.
Her mother, my late sister, and I weren’t raised by loving parents who were present during our lives at all. We were raised by a continuously changing wave of staff and nannies—seven days a week and twenty-four hours a day. Our parents didn’t want their prime years to be consumed by doing the actual parenting thing. Instead, they chose to travel the world. They had one thing they truly did care about—making appearances at every high-society gala they could find and making sure that our family name and standing never dropped below the upper crust.