Then again.
The calls kept coming while Dany told me about a cartoon he wanted to watch when we got home.
I refused to let my mother take that evening from him too.
By the time we left the diner, the sky had gone dark and the air had cooled.
Dany skipped beside me for half a block, then asked to be carried.
I lifted him onto my hip and felt his head settle against my shoulder.
He smelled like soap from the sunscreen I had put on him earlier and the ketchup he had somehow managed to smear near his ear.
At home, I gave him a bath, helped him into his dinosaur pajamas, and tucked him into bed.
He asked whether Grandma was mad at him.
The question landed harder than anything my mother had said.
“No,” I told him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Is Carter her real grandson?”
