Page 21 of Detours & Booby Traps

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"I already texted my mom. Just waiting to hear back from her."

"When is this?" Mateo asks.

"Thursday," Coop answers.

"They leave Thursday afternoon for Montana. That golf tournament with Uncle Frank," Mateo tells us. "I'll take the punk."

I grit my teeth. "Stop calling him that."

"But I like it," Coop says. "It's a nickname that isn't my name."

Mateo lifts one side of his mouth up in a smile.

"So, Thursday?" he asks.

Every fiber of my being tells me to say no. It's on the tip of my tongue.

"Please?" Addie asks, jutting out her bottom lip.

"Yeah, Mom, please?" Coop copies Addie, his bottom lip in a pout.

"Yea, please?" I don't need to look at Mateo to know his lip is out too.

If the saying is two peas in a pod, what's three?

And why am I the odd woman out?

Chapter nine

Mateo

"When does she start?" Dad asks. He leans back against the counter, arms crossed, and pins me with that look. The one all dads have when they think something's a bad idea.

"Monday."

"Do you really think it's a good idea?"

And boom, there it is.

"What's a good idea?" Mom asks, joining us in the kitchen, rolling her small suitcase behind her.

Neither of us answers.

"I'm ready to go when you are," she tells Dad.

"You're walking a dangerous line, kid," he says. Kid. He hasn't called me that in years, fucking decades. It should make me think twice. But it doesn't.

"What do you need an assistant for anyway?" he asks. "I'll tell you. You don't. You've got a bleeding heart like your mother."

"And you," I say.

He gives me a half-smile.

"She's Addie's best friend," Mom adds, reading the room for what it is.

"She needed a job, and I needed an assistant. That's all this is," I say, standing from the stool. I'm moving pretty well today, and it feels good to be on both feet.

"If you say so," Dad says. "But I think you should take the blinders off and look at the complete picture."

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