He drew in a deep breath and I drew in one with him.

Then he kept giving it to her.

“I gotta tell you, this sucks ’cause I’m gonna miss Mary and Tobias. But it doesn’t suck because I’m not gonna miss you. You bother my mom again, I’ll tell you to your face. You push it, I’ll say it to a judge. I’m never goin’ with you. Not ever. You find a way to make me, I’ll run away. I gotta look after my mom and you made me hafta do that by making it this way. So, later. You got it in you to be halfway decent, give Mary and Tobias a hug from me. Maybe when all of us are grown up, we can get together and talk about how crazy you are. But that’ll have to wait until we’re all grown up.”

With that, he punched a button and tossed the phone to the couch.

He looked back to me. “Okay. Done. Now we got, like, no time to eat pizza. We’ll have to snarf it down before I gotta meet Teddy at the game, which sucks, and I’m blamin’ that on Peggy too.” He looked to Merry. “I gotta get my bag, then we can go.”

On that, he tramped from the room, Merry and me turning to watch him go.

“Just to say,” Merry started softly, and my thoughts on my kid, worried, my eyes drifted up to him, “not sure how much better I gotta get to know your boy.”

I felt my lips part, but he wasn’t done.

He looked down at me. “Think I just fell in love, brown eyes.”

I couldn’t stop it, no way.

I swayed toward him.

He caught me in both arms.

And he still wasn’t done.

“He’s a good man, takin’ care of his mom.”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

Merry smiled at me, soft and sweet.

Ethan stormed into the room, looked at us, and stopped.

“Okay, maybe I was wrong about the gooey, ’cause…gross,” he declared.

Merry didn’t let me go.

Ethan threw out an annoyed hand. “We gonna get pizza or what?”

“We’re gonna get pizza, bud,” Merry said, dropping one arm but keeping his other around me to guide me Ethan’s way.

“You okay?” I asked him as we moved.

“Uh…no,” Ethan answered. “Peggy’s totally crazy and Dad just stood there and let her mouth off at you. All he cared about was that Merry’s a cop. What’s that all about?”

“Well…” I let that trail off, not sure I felt like sharing Trent’s rap sheet and drug history and thus his natural aversion to law enforcement with Ethan at this juncture.

“It doesn’t matter.” Ethan lifted his chin again, eyes on me. “He’s weak. I’m not weak. I’m like you. I can take care of myself. I can take care of you. And I’m like Merry, who’s all, get in your vehicle and go, real angry-like but still patient when you just gotta take one look at him and see he so totally wanted to whale on Dad.” Ethan looked to Merry. “I kinda wish you did, though Mom says hitting people is wrong. Dad needs some sense knocked into him.”