This kid. I gave his hand a squeeze and we exchanged a grin. Sure enough, sitting on the first row were the Larsens, their eyes locked on the field. The long, furry white body at their feet made me grin. They’d brought Mac, too.

“Grandma! Tia’s here!” Louie shouted for half of the parents sitting there during practice to hear. I could see them out of the corner of my eye, trying to see who he was talking about, but I made sure to keep my eyes firmly on the only two adults there I wanted to interact with. Mac’s head turned to our direction, his nose twitching, and in the blink of an eye he was up; that white tail slashing through the air violently.

“Diana, honey,” Mrs. Larsen greeted me first with a closed-mouth smile as she got to her feet and gave me a hug as Mac squeezed in between us, hopping off his front feet for attention. Kneeling, I wrapped the giant dog in a hug and buried my face in his coat as he tried licking the skin off my face.

Standing again, I hugged Mr. Larsen next. “Thank you so much for watching the boys for me.” I’d already told them this exact same thing every time I’d spoken to them, but I really was grateful. When my mom heard that I had left for San Diego and that the Larsens were keeping the boys in the meantime, she had gone on this spiel about how I couldn’t just pick up and leave them like that. ¿Que te crees? Who did I think I was, she’d asked. By the end of the conversation, I’d been torn between crying and screaming.

“Any time you want,” Mr. Larsen confirmed, giving my back a pat. “Vanessa and the baby are fine?”

I took a seat on the bleacher beside Mrs. Larsen with Louie taking my left, his hand palming my thigh in a way that had me grinning. “She’s great, all things considered.” I made a line across my stomach and shuddered. “And the baby is perfect.” I set my hand on top of Louie’s and wiggled my eyebrows. “Your new cousin is almost as cute as you are.”

“He is my cousin, huh?” the boy asked.

“Yup.” He’d been calling Vanessa his aunt his entire life. “Maybe we can go visit them soon and make a trip to Disneyland out of it.” I could already picture grumpy Josh’s groans about Disneyland, but he’d have to live with it.

“I always wanted a cousin…,” Louie started to say, blinking.

God, he was so cute.

“And a sister.”

I coughed. I coughed like I’d come down with emphysema randomly. What the hell did he want a little sister for? What was I supposed to do? Pull one off a tree for him?

What was the best response for that?

There wasn’t one, so I pretended not to hear him.

Mrs. Larsen heard him, too, because when I turned to face her, her blue eyes were wide and she had her lips pressed together. I’m glad one of us thought it was funny, because I sure as hell didn’t. I peeked at Louie again, making sure not to make eye contact, and wondered where the hell he’d gotten that from. Didn’t every kid want to be the baby in the family?

The rattle of the fence protecting the people in the bleachers from the field had me glancing up to find a tall boy I could recognize even with a mask and helmet on, as well as a jersey that covered him from his neck to his hands. “Josh!”

He waved his bat and hand at the same time; I could tell he was smiling even with the black mouthpiece protecting the lower half of his face. I really had missed these kids. I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

Josh had just turned around to continue on with practice when I happened to glance to the side and saw him. Dallas was standing off by third base with his hands in the pockets of his frayed, ancient jeans, and he was staring over in my direction. He wasn’t casually looking; he was definitely staring.

I waved, and I was pretty sure he smiled.

* * *

“Goo, are you gonna fall asleep in there, or what?”

“No,” Louie answered, two spaceships held up in the air, their noses inches away from each other.

There was no way the bathwater was still warm. He’d been sitting in the tub playing with his spaceships for the last half hour while I was busy trying to sew the knee of a torn pair of his school pants. Usually on nights when Josh had baseball practice, I didn’t insist that he bathe, but Josh had admitted to me that neither one of them had taken a bath in two days and that just wasn’t going to work for me. While I made a quick dinner of frozen taquitos and a bag of frozen corn in the microwave, the eleven-year-old had showered.

“Then come on. You know you have to go to school tomorrow and you need your beauty rest.”

He smiled at me shyly as he climbed to his feet, still completely innocent, not caring that he was naked. A year ago, back when we’d shared one bathroom, I’d accidentally walked in on Josh. He’d been buck naked and had yelled like I’d gone in there to kill him, screaming with two hands covering his privates, “Don’t look at my nuggets!”

As if I hadn’t seen his little pistachios a thousand times before.

Within the next five minutes, I had Louie dried off and watched as he slipped on his pajamas. The top was Spiderman, the bottom was dinosaurs. After ruffling his hair, I cleaned up the mess we’d made in the bathroom and headed to the laundry room to put a load into the washer. I had just put detergent into the machine when I heard a knock at the front door. I didn’t need to look at my watch to know it was damn near ten at night. Who the hell would be coming by so late?

My neighbor, that was who.

Dallas’s face was tipped to the side when I peeked through the peephole. Letting out a long breath through my nose, I thought about not answering but then changed my mind. I was going to have to see him again soon anyway. Why the hell not get it over with? Maybe he’d forgotten what I said, and if he hadn’t… too fucking bad, I guessed. I couldn’t take it back now.