Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Plus, I’d get to spend time with Beckett.
Just thinking about seeing him again made my stomach flip-flop and my lips curve into a smile.
Sam certainly hadn’t cared that I was taking Elliott away for a couple weeks. He was free to see his son whenever he wanted to, but he canceled their planned visits about half the time.
Not that I was surprised, I thought, as I took Elliott’s hand and led him into the travel center. Sam had been growing distant ever since it was obvious that Elliott wasn’t a “typical” boy—at least in Sam’s mind—meaning one who wanted to wear jeans and play with trucks all the time. He liked jeans and trucks just fine, but he also liked dresses and Barbie dolls, and I wasn’t going to tell him that was wrong. Because it wasn’t.
We are who we are, and we deserve to be loved for it.
“Use the bathroom,” I instructed Elliott, who was still standing by the sinks when I came out of a stall, admiring his shimmery unicorn barrette in the mirror.
“I don’t have to go.”
“We’re not leaving until you do, so best get to it.” I scrubbed my hands and gave him a matter-of-fact look in the mirror.
He sighed and rolled his eyes but went into a stall.
A moment later, the woman a few sinks down spoke up. “You know, he should be using the men’s room,” she said coldly.
I glanced her way. She was older—maybe in her late sixties—with unnaturally yellow hair and beady, judgmental eyes. “He’s only six,” I told her.
“He’s a boy.” She set her mouth in a prim line. “He should use the boys’ bathroom.”
“I see,” I said, drying my hands with scratchy brown paper towels. I knew what her issue was with my son, and it wasn’t just about the bathroom.
“If you don’t start treating him like a boy now, it will be too late. You’re confusing him.” She crossed her arms over her chest and sniffed. “It’s terrible parenting.”
Steaming mad, I tossed the paper towel into the trash, willing myself not to blow up—to instead set a good example for my child, who’d come out of the stall and was washing his hands next to me. “Come on, Elliott. Let’s go get a snack before we hit the road again.”
“Where’s his father?” the woman demanded. “Does he know you dress his son like a girl?”
Elliott glanced down at his pink T-shirt and frowned, and my fury reached the boiling point.
I grabbed Elliott’s hand and turned on her. “Currently his father is too busy buttering the biscuit of his latest girlfriend to care about raising his son, so it’s up to me to teach the important life lessons—and one of them is that it’s pointless to engage with rude, narrow-minded people who never learned to treat others with decency and respect. So thank you for this educational opportunity.”
While her pruney mouth hung open in surprise, I pushed open the door and sailed through it, Elliott right beside me. I was still fuming as we waited in line to pay for our snacks.
Elliott looked up at me. “Boys can wear pink, right?”
“Of course they can.” I squeezed his hand. “You remember what Pinkalicious said in the book, right? Pink is for everybody.”
“Why did that lady say those things?”
My heart threatened to break. “Because some people haven’t learned to appreciate all the different things that make human beings special and wonderful. They think there’s only one way to be.”
“But why?”
Because they’re assholes, I thought. “Because they weren’t taught love and acceptance.”
Elliott touched his unicorn barrette. “Did that lady make you mad?”
“Unkind people always make me mad.” I stopped and took a deep breath. “But I probably shouldn’t have said those things. That wasn’t kind either.”
“Why did you say Daddy was buttering a biscuit?”
“Uh, never mind.” Thankfully, it was our turn at the cashier, and I nudged him forward. “Come on, put your snacks up there. I’m anxious to get back on the road.”
“To see your old house?”
“Mostly to see my old friend,” I said with a smile. “I’ve really missed him.”
As I turned onto the familiar sun-baked dirt road I’d grown up on, it struck me how little it had changed.
The same split-rail fence bordering Weaver Ranch on the right, the same small, ramshackle houses on the left. I slowed the car and rolled down the windows, breathing in deeply. The smell was familiar too—hay, manure, fields of corn and sugar beets. Even the sound of tires spitting gravel took me back. It was like time had stopped.
With one big exception.
“Wow. Who lives there?” Elliott asked.
“That must be the new house Beckett built,” I said as the home came fully into view. It was stunning—a rugged structure of timber and stone and glass that would have looked just as natural against the craggy peaks of Montana as it did in the gently rolling hills of west Michigan. I slowed to a stop in front of the driveway. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”