Page 122 of Wicked Proposal

“Well,” Mia says, ruffling her son’s hair as she walks by, “Aunt Kallie heard her friend Maksim was waiting downstairs. She didn’t want him to eat alone.”

“Too old for her,” my ass.

That answer seems to pacify Eli. He goes back to playing with his worn Garfield plushie. Occasionally, his eyes will flit up, studying me. Every time they do, I’m struck by the resemblance. Aside from his hair—too curly, too light, too much like Brad’s—he’s the spitting image of Mia.

“Are you really not a spy?”

I almost choke on my water.

“Eli!” Mia scolds. “That’s rude. We talked about this.”

“It’s fine,” I tell her. Then I turn back to her son. “Wanna know a secret?”

“A secret?”

“I’ve never even been to Russia.”

He gasps. “No way!”

“It’s very far.” I shrug. “My parents came from there, but I never went.”

“They won’t take you? Not even for a holiday?”

They can’t. Not anymore.“Someday, perhaps, I’ll go.”

“Can we come?”

This time, it’s Mia’s turn to choke on her water.

It makes something playful flare inside me. Something that hasn’t been stirred in a long time. “Aren’t you afraid of the spies?”

“I wanna meet them!”

“Then, yes. If your mom says it’s okay.”

He turns to Mia with pleading eyes. “Can we, Mommy?! Can we go to Russia to play spies?!”

“Well, you don’t have your passport yet. So why don’t we put a pin in it until then?”

“Okay,” he concedes. “But I really wanna go.”

Eli chats my ear off some more, with Mia chiming in every now and then. It strikes me how quickly we’ve gone from awkward to comfortable. How quicklyIdid.

Growing up, kids were like aliens to me: tiny beings with huge eyes and secret languages I couldn’t decipher, let alone speak. The fact that I’d been a kid once too had slipped so far below the surface, I barely remembered how it went.

Now, it’s all coming back.

The pizza comes. We sit down to eat. Garfield has a little plate for himself, too, where Eli discreetly pushes his crusts.

Then, from outside the window, light flashes into the room. “Mommy!” Eli jumps down from his chair. “That phorogopher’s here again!”

“Photographer,” Mia corrects. “And I think that’s just the light from a blowtorch, munchkin. You know there’s always some road work around here.”

At night?

My instincts kick in. I feel that prickling at the back of my neck again.

“I forgot something in the car,” I tell them. “I’ll be right back.”