by Lucy Score
She had a master’s degree for God’s sake. That was no preparation for dealing with these hellions.
“Okay, boys,” she breathed, trying to lull them into confessing with a calm tone. “Carter, why did you think Beckett needed you to cut his hair.”
“Well, Mom.” It was always ‘mom’ from Carter, never ‘mama’ or ‘mommy.’ Beneath his six-year-old surface, the kid was forty years old. “You said you had to give us all haircuts ‘cuz of pictures, and you know Beckett gets scared of the clippers. So I used scissors.” He was so proud of his problem-solving.
Oh, my God. The family pictures John had scheduled for them at Sears.
“You like it, Mama?” Beckett grinned, showing two missing teeth. One had been a legitimate loose tooth. The other a casualty of little brother Jax shoving him off the merry-go-round at the park.
Speak of the devil, bare feet hustled down the hallway. “Mama, I no feel good—” Jax, two, with only a diaper and t-shirt stepped into the kitchen.
“Honey, where are your pants?” The damn kid was constantly stripping.
He didn’t answer. At least, not with words. With the natural forces of a volcano, Jax spewed vomit in a perfect 180-degree arc.
“Oh, sweet Jesus.” For one shining moment, Phoebe felt a deep and abiding sense of gratitude that they’d decided to get one more year out of the hideous orange linoleum floor.
Forgetting about the older two non-puking sons, Phoebe grabbed Jax under the arms and put him in the sink. He went yellow again, and she had just enough time to hand him a soup pot to throw up into. The phone was ringing, and Phoebe gathered every dish towel from the drawer and sprinted for the puke pond. She tossed the towels down and snatched the phone off the wall.
“Hello?” she shouted into it.
“Is now a bad time?” her dearest friend Elvira asked. Phoebe could hear the smile in her voice.
“Why did you let me get married and have three boys? Why didn’t you tell me to buy a nice little cottage in the woods and not drive myself insane?”
“What’s that beeping?” Elvira asked.
Phoebe muttered a string of curses. “Just the smoke detector. I apparently just charcoaled dinner.” Her beautiful casserole, one of John’s favorites, was pumping black smoke through the oven vents.
She pushed the towels through Jax’s puddle and went running for the stove when it registered. “Oh, my God, Jax, why is your vomit blue?”
“Mama,” Jax wailed, hot tears streaming down his chubby little cheeks.
“What did you eat?” Jesus, did he find drain cleaner somewhere? “El, what color is drain cleaner?”
“Green, or yellowish green I think.” Phoebe breathed a sigh of relief and switched off the oven knob. “But laundry detergent’s blue.”
“Jackson Scott, did you eat laundry detergent?” Her voice was so high Murdock, covered snout to stump in mud, came charging into the kitchen from the side door. His fur was ruffled, ready to fight off whatever invader made his mommy scream like that.
“Mom, I saw him eating booberry pie upstairs,” Carter announced helpfully.
“Blueberry, honey,” Phoebe corrected him automatically.
“That’s what I said. Booberry.”
“Where did he get—” Phoebe turned in his direction and shrieked. “Beckett! Stop cutting your brother’s hair this instant!”
Beckett did a little dance and pointed at his brother. “Look, mama. We match!” Carter was indeed now sporting his own bald spot and lopsided bangs.
“Oh, shit.”
Carter’s little mouth formed a perfect ‘o’. “Mom, that’s a bad word!”
“Murdock, NO!” Phoebe’s scream was loud enough to be heard halfway into town, but it had no effect on the dog that made a beeline for the pile of barf and towels. “JOHN!”
Her husband, her hero, the man who loved her even when she was shrieking like a banshee, sprinted into the kitchen from the side door. The sloppy yellow lab hot on his heels. His entrance scared Murdock who skittered through the outskirts of the puddle, leaving puke paw prints in his dash, to the relative safety of the kitchen table. Phoebe didn’t realize she was still holding the phone, its cord stretched across the room. John didn’t see it either, and it caught him like a trip wire across the shins.
All six-feet two-inches of him went down in a heap. “Mother of God, what am I laying in?”
“What the hell is happening over there? Do I need to call Hazel?” Elvira demanded.
“I gotta go, El. John just fell in blueberry puke.”
--------
Ten minutes later, John stripped to his underwear was giving Jax and Murdock a bath in the sink while Phoebe worked the vomit and child hair and mud into a manageable pile. Carter and Beckett were sitting at the kitchen table eating cold cereal for their dinner. The casserole had finally stopped smoking on the counter.
“We’re going to need a new broom,” she said, eyeing the bristles of the one she held with the emptiness of a survivor going into shock.
“Do you remember your first summer here?” John asked as he used a dish towel on Jax’s head.
Phoebe closed her eyes and remembered it wistfully. “Just you and me. All those long nights and quiet mornings.”
“No one wanting to watch Mr. Rogers,” John continued.
“Mr. Rogers on, daddy?” Jax asked hopefully.
“No, buddy. Not tonight.” His words were gentle, loving, even though Phoebe knew he was as close to the breaking point as she was.
At least she’d been dead right with that choice. Her husband, the love of her ridiculous life, was a constant source of joy and support and commiseration.
“Maybe we should take Rose up on her offer to take the b-o-y-s for a week?” Phoebe suggested hopefully.
John shot her a look. “What has your sister ever done to us that would deserve that?”
“I’m desperate. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m one tiny infraction away from burning this house down and walking away, talking to the voices in my head.”
The doorbell sounded, and before Phoebe could decide to just hide under the table and wish it all away, Beckett charged down the hallway to the front door.
“Hi ya, Evywa!”
“Hey, cutie. Is your Mom still alive?”
“She wooks stressed,” he said as if a four-year-old knew what stress was. “Is dat pizza?”
On the word “pizza” Carter hurdled the puddle of nasty and joined his brother at the door.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Normedann,”
Oh, hell. Phoebe was not prepared to deal with Mrs. Nordemann.
“Nordemann, sweetie,” Mrs. Nordemann corrected him.
“That’s what I said!”
They trooped back the hall, each footstep sounding to Phoebe like the arrival of a firing squad. Elvira poked her head into the room and shook her head. “Bet you’re never going to question my life choices again,” she teased Phoebe.
Phoebe burst into tears.
Mrs. Nordemann hopped neatly over the vomit and mud and towels and patted Phoebe on the back. “There, there, my dear. Everything is going to be just fine. This is nothing we can’t handle.”
“We?” Phoebe wailed.
“We’re all family. No one can do this,” she gave the chaos a sweeping glance, “alone.”
“First thing’s first. Boys, pizza. Oh, dear lord, what happened to your hair?” Mrs. Nordemann clapped a hand over her mouth.
“We cutted it!” Beckett announced.
“With scissors,” Carter added, eyeing up the pizza boxes.
“Well, we can’t do anything about that right now,” Elvira sighed. “Go, upstairs and wash your hands and bring a diaper and pants down for your brother.”
Phoebe watched in teary disbelief as her boys scrambled to obey.
“What magic power do you have?”
“It’s called Peace of Pizza,” Elvira said, wiggling the box. �
��In my experience, men do anything for food.”
“Peesa, daddy! Peesa!” Jax squealed.
“Jesus, kid, didn’t you just puke up a week’s worth of pie?” John asked, plucking his son out of the sink.
“I’ve got him,” Mrs. Nordemann announced, plucking the wet and wiggly toddler out of John’s hands and wrapping him in the only clean dish towel left in the house.
“Watch out,” John warned. “Sometimes he pees after a bath.”
“I peed in da sink,” Jax said, stretching his arms out for the pizza across the kitchen.
“Add disinfect sink to the list,” Mrs. Nordemann called out to Elvira.
The doorbell rang again, and Carter and Beckett opened it on their way downstairs.
“Hi, Unca Mike! Come in!” Beckett said grandly.
“There’s pizza,” Carter told him.
The boys, followed by Michael Cardona who was holding his son and an overnight bag, returned to the kitchen.
“Mom, here’s the pie plate. Found it in Jax’s room,” Carter announced, flinging the empty dish at her.
“Jackson, you ate an entire pie? That was for the bake sale tomorrow.”
“Elvira, add pie to the list,” Mrs. Nordemann said, expertly diapering Jax.
“What list?” John asked, coming up behind Phoebe and wrapping his arms around her as if they were a rock in the midst of a storm.
Michael plopped his son down at the table. “Stay there and have some pizza, Donovan,” he told the little blond boy.
“’kay, daddy!”
Beckett leaned in and put his arm around his friend.
“Can someone tell us what’s happening?” Phoebe asked weakly.
Elvira shoveled the mass of mess away from the door and straightened. She handed Phoebe a set of keys.
“You two are packing a bag and spending the night at my house. There is a bottle of pinot on the counter and a six-pack of Budweiser in the fridge. If any ‘activity’ happens in my bed, you will wash the sheets before you leave.”
Mrs. Nordemann deposited a freshly diapered and dressed Jax at the table where he promptly stole Carter’s slice of pizza.
“Hey! That’s mine! M-O-M!”
“Do not respond to that,” Elvira said, shoving Phoebe and John toward the stairs. “Pretend they do not exist. Jillian and I are cleaning and baking. Michael and I are spending the night. Hazel’s on call, but she’ll be here in the morning.”
“We can’t ask you to do that—” John’s argument was interrupted by Elvira’s shake of her curls.
“This is what we do. Parenthood is a festering nightmare dotted with moments of truly blissful wonderment. This is not one of those moments. This is a time when we can step in and give you a bit of breathing room so you can come back tomorrow with some sanity.”
Phoebe opened her mouth to say thank you, to argue, to tell Elvira she was the most wonderful person in the world. But all that came were more tears.
“Before you feel like a charity case, we do this for everyone. There has never been a couple with kids in Blue Moon who hasn’t needed and deserved a break.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Michael called from the kitchen doorway. “We’ve got this covered.”
“Are we havin’ a sleep over?” Carter’s voice piped up from the kitchen.
“Sure are, bud,” Michael told him.
A chorus of “yays” echoed through the kitchen.
“Cardona,” John began.
“You guys took Donovan overnight last month when we were four seconds away from locking him out of the house and pretending we moved,” Michael said, cutting off any argument.
“Donovan is one extra kid to us,” Phoebe told him. “This is three extras. With access to blueberry pie and scissors. And sometimes Jax wakes up in the middle of the night—”
“We’ve got this,” Elvira said, nudging her toward the stairs. “Go pack a change of clothes, and I don’t want to see your face before ten tomorrow morning.”
“The dogs need fed. The cats, too. The cows and horses are done, I think. John did you feed the donkey—” Phoebe ran through her mental list.
Elvira pinched Phoebe’s lips shut. “We’ve got this. No one is going to starve to death or be neglected by 10 a.m. tomorrow.”
Phoebe’s brain did the math. Sixteen hours of uninterrupted peace. Sixteen hours of not hearing “Mom, Mama, Mom.” Sixteen hours of peeing by herself. My God, she could take a shower! She looked at John and saw the spark of hope in his beautiful gray eyes. Sixteen hours of enjoying each other.
“Yeah, I see that look. Wash my sheets,” Elvira reminded them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
At 9:59 the next morning a brand-new Phoebe returned home. John, loose and relaxed behind the wheel next to her, sighed.
“I was planning on working another hour on the transmission last night after dinner.” His fingers toyed with the skin on the back of her neck.
“And leave me alone with those three monsters again?” she teased.
“I didn’t say it was a good plan. But I thought if I got the transmission working last night, I could get a jump on spraying this morning. Then we could take the rest of the day off. Swim in the pond or go into town for ice cream. Wear the boys out so I could enjoy some more quiet, quality time with my wife after they fell asleep.”
His hand brushed her hair back from her face. She’d cut it shorter a year ago. It came to her shoulders now, straight as an arrow. It was easier than taking care of her long tresses that were irresistible to little fingers that gripped and pulled. But there was still enough of it for John to run his fingers through.
“With a locked door this time,” Phoebe reminded him. “We don’t need Jax asking even more questions about naked wrestling.”
The corner of John’s mouth turned up. “I swear I locked it last time. I don’t know how those buggers got in there.”
Seven years in, and he was still the sexiest man on the planet to her. He still felt like home and heaven and everything good and steady in her life. The life they’d built together—sure, it was a mess sometimes—but it was a damn good mess.
Phoebe rested her hand on his thigh and squeezed. “I love you, John Pierce, grower of sunflowers and raiser of boys.”
Tenderly, he pulled her across the bench seat of his truck to him. “And I love you, Phoebe Allen Pierce. Keeper of books and tender of children and pets.”
He kissed her softly, sweetly. A gentle reminder that even when all else was chaos, this, this was good and safe and solid and oh so right.
She cupped his face, enjoying the scratch of stubble on her palm. “Maybe if I pack you a sandwich, you can work through lunch, and we can still take the boys into town for ice cream tonight?”
“Sounds like a plan, my brilliant wife.”
They got out of the truck and took a moment to stare up at the house.
“You know,” Phoebe sighed. “I’m awfully glad I was your Mrs. Pierce. It would have been a shame for you to have to tear this place down and build from scratch.”
He laughed. I’m awfully glad you came back and yelled some sense into me that day. He brushed his lips over her cheek. “Are you ready?”
She bit her lip. “As insane as they drive me, I missed them last night,” she confessed.
“That’s the Pierce charm,” he said with a wink.
Their boys burst through the front door still in their pajamas. “Mom! Daddy! Mama!” Little voices greeted them, little arms embraced them, and in motherly amnesia, Phoebe forgot all about the disaster of last night and let herself love.
“We played Atari with Uncle Mike!”
“Me ate fwee eggs!”
“Can Donovan wiv wiff us?”
Michael, Hazel, and Elvira joined the party on the porch with coffee mugs and donuts.
Phoebe settled Beckett on her hip while John hefted Jackson over his shoulder. Carter hopped on his father’s back.
“Thank you just doesn’t seem like enough.” Phoebe leaned in to wrap Elvira in a well-earned, one-armed hug.
Elvira smirked. “Please. Piece of cake. I don’t know what you parents are always complaining about,” she winked.
John, juggling Jax, exchanged a shoulder slapping manshake with Michael.
“Welcome home,” Hazel said, pressing a coffee cup into Phoebe’s hand.
“I’m afraid to go inside,” Phoebe whispered.
Hazel’s laugh boomed under the porch roof. “There’s no puke. I promise.”
“I frowed up yesterday,” Jax announced cheerfully from John’s arms.
“He gets his emotional eating from me,” Phoebe joked.
Donovan wrapped his chubby little arms around her leg. “My Mommy and Daddy wrestle nakeds just like you and Uncca John!”
“Oh, lord.” Phoebe clamped a hand over Donovan’s mouth.
“Let’s see if we can dig up some booze for that coffee,” Hazel said, red-faced.
“Kitchen pantry behind the wheat bran,” Phoebe called after her.
With her arms full of boys, she stepped into the house that no longer smelled like blueberry vomit. It smelled lemony with a hint of lavender. The living room had been redecorated with a large quilt and cushion fort bursting with blankets and pillows. The hallway floor was swept clean, and there wasn’t a speck of dust on any of the picture frames dotting the entryway walls.
Gone was the puddle of disgustingness. The linoleum gleamed brighter than new. The kitchen counters were clear, the breakfast dishes were drying next to the sink, and there was a full pot of coffee on.
“I know John is my husband and all, but I’d marry each and every one of you for this,” Phoebe said, feeling her eyes grow misty.
Murdock, the aging canine who refused to embrace his elderliness, woke in his bed in the corner. His rear end wagged, and he let out a greeting yip before rolling onto his back and falling asleep again. Sadie, the dopic retriever John had found on the roadside with a broken leg, danced at their feet until one of the cats wandered through the kitchen drawing her attention.
“Let’s see,” Elvira said. “Nordemann worked her magic on your casserole dish. I don’t know how she got that charcoal brick out of it, but it’s good as new. The dishtowels were a complete loss. Hazel picked some new ones up on her way in this morning. The boys had breakfast. Laundry’s done and hanging out on the line. And there’s sandwich fixings for lunch.”
