“My dad died when I was a kid,” Dallas told him gently. “I still miss him a lot. My mom used to tell me stories about him too sometimes but not like your Buttercup does. You’re really lucky, you know that?”

“Your dad died too?”

Dallas nodded. “I was ten. He was the best man in the whole world. I wanted to be just like him. I still wanna be just like him.”

I kept my mouth shut and watched Louie’s face as he said, “My daddy was a policeman. I wanna be like him too.”

“You can be whatever you want to be, Lou,” our neighbor said. The hand he had on Louie’s foot moved and his fingers plucked at one of Louie’s toes.

“That’s what Tia Di says.”

“She knows what she’s talking about.”

Louie smiled. His eyes flashed over to mine and his smile grew even wider. “Yeah.” Just as quickly as it had arrived, the curves of his mouth disappeared and he glanced once more at Dallas. “I only like stories about my dad.”

“You might like stories about your mom, too, buddy. I’m sure she had to be pretty special to have such a nice son like you.”

This guy was killing me. “She was pretty special, Goo,” I let him know, my voice just a little unsteady. I had to take advantage of this opportunity Dallas was giving me. “Where do you think you get how sweet and cute you are from? Everyone loved your mom.”

He blinked and his fingers peeked out from over the top of the comforter, curling over the edge of it. I’d swear his eyes narrowed just a little. “They did?” From the tone of his voice, it confirmed he didn’t believe it. Had my parents said something in front of him to make him think otherwise? I doubted the Larsens had, but what did I know?

A lump settled into my chest, and I had to force myself to ignore it. “Oh yeah. Ask Josh.” I wanted to ask him if he didn’t remember her but that seemed almost cruel. “She was always happy and she never had a mean thing to say about anyone.” I smiled at him.

Those blue eyes jumped between me to Dallas and then to his comforter. I glanced at Dallas and reached out to put my hand over the one he had on Louie’s feet. His fingers spread wide and took mine between his.

“Did she…” Louie hesitated. “What did she say when I was born?”

I wasn’t going to cry in front of him. I wasn’t going to cry in front of him.

The last time we’d talked about Mandy had been right after she died, weeks, maybe a couple of months maximum. Louie had cried. He’d been a toddler back then but his hurt over how his mom had rejected him in the long weeks after Rodrigo passed away had been unavoidable. It had taken long enough for him to understand my brother wasn’t coming back. Death wasn’t something a three-year-old could really process. For the longest time he’d thought he was at work, and it wasn’t until one random day that he accepted never meant never. His daddy—my brother—was never coming back. Not that day or the next, or a year from then.

What he hadn’t been able to accept or comprehend was why his mom hadn’t been there afterward.

I could remember the tears and the questions. “Where’s Mommy?” and “Why doesn’t Mommy play?” There’s no way I could forget how confused Louie, more than Josh, had been back then. I didn’t doubt Josh had loved Mandy, but she wasn’t all he’d ever known. Josh had always been aware of the situation with Anita. The only thing that had worked out in that time period was that Louie had always been close to me and hadn’t rejected my love and attention back then. He hadn’t understood what was going on with his mom but he’d jumped into what I had been more than willing to give him.

I think he’d been too busy grieving my brother to really let him feel anything other than anger at his mom after she was gone, and after a while, he’d just stopped talking about her. Like he didn’t want to remember she existed. No matter how much I tried bringing her up, he refused.

Until today.

“She cried a lot,” I told him softly, forcing myself to smile. “Happy tears. Like when Santa brought Josh his baseball bat and he cried, remember that? She kept saying you were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and how she couldn’t believe she could love anything as much as she loved you. She didn’t let me hug you for two days after you were born, can you believe that? She didn’t want to share you with anybody, only your dad.”

Louie watched me the entire time. A smile never crossed his face. It was only the fingers he had at the top of his covers that tapped along the material as he listened.

Dallas’s fingers tightened around my own. “That sounds like she loved you a lot,” he said to my Lou.

All the little boy said was “Hmm.” That was it.

I was going to take it. For now. Not wanting to force him to talk about her any more for now, I told him, “Your brother has tons of stories about her. You should ask him to tell you some of them one day. He loved her a lot. I loved her, too.”

Louie’s eyes were glassier than normal when he glanced at me and nodded his head quickly. Way too quickly. His mouth twitched sadly and he swallowed. Then he swallowed again, and I felt like he’d come to a decision about something. “Like you love me?” the sneaky booger asked in his normal voice.

I had to accept we had gotten somewhere tonight by at least bringing her up. I winked at him. “Don’t get crazy. Not that much.”