Wrong Place, Right Time(57)

“Oh, so we’re going to play coy, are we?” He taps his thumbs on the steering wheel as he nods. “Okay. I see how you are. I can handle it.”

I’m not going to read too much into that statement. He’s just being flirty and cute. It’s fun. I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but the way he teases and jokes around so easily, I feel like I’m with an old friend, like I can be myself.

Sammy starts chanting from the back seat. “McDonald’th, McDonald’th, McDonald’th.”

Dev glances up in his rearview mirror at our backseat passenger. “You’re not excited about eating at McDonald’s, are you?”

Sammy stretches his arms really high in the air, straining his whole body with his enthusiastic answer. “Yeth, I am!”

Dev play-frowns. “Nah. Maybe we should go somewhere else. Maybe we should go to a really fancy restaurant for your mommy.”

Sammy frowns, worried Dev is serious. “No! I don’t like fanthy rethtauranth. Fanthy rethtauranth don’t like kidth.”

Dev smiles. “How could anybody not like you? You’re awesome.”

Sammy smiles absently. “I’m awethome. I’m totally awethome.” He turns his head and looks out the window, swinging his legs so they bang into the seat. If it were in another car, I might worry about it, but this car is a piece of junk. I know Dev is in love with it, but the backseats have stuffing coming out of them, for God’s sake.

“Okay,” Dev says with a sigh of defeat, “I guess we’d better go to McDonald’s, then.”

Sammy doesn’t seem to hear Dev. He just keeps staring out the window, his face falling little by little.

Dev sees him in the rearview mirror and glances over at me. He whispers. “What’s up with that? Did I say something wrong?”

I shake my head, my concern for my son taking over my thoughts. “No, I don’t think so. He’s got something going on at daycare, I’m pretty sure. He had a ‘stomachache’ this morning.” I use air-quotes to emphasize my point.

Dev nods, turning his attention back to the front windshield as the stoplight turns green. His voice remains low so Sammy won’t pay attention to it. “You’ll figure it out, eventually. You just have to ask the right questions and get him talking.”

I shake my head as I stare at the traffic going by. “I wish I knew what the right questions were. But sometimes this kid is just a great big mystery to me. So different from my girls.”

Dev pats my leg a few times before putting his hand back on the wheel. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll stuff him full of burgers and fries and he’ll sing like a canary.”

I smile. Dev apparently knows exactly how little boy brains work.

“Hey!” Dev says all of a sudden. “What’s that over there?” He’s pointing out the front window.

Sammy’s attention snaps back to us. “Where?” He strains in his seat to see out the windshield.

Dev is still pointing. “Over there! What are those big yellow things? Looks like a big M or something.”

Sammy grabs the edge of his car seat and squeals. “It’th McDonald’th! We’re almotht there!”

“Hallelujah,” says Dev. “I’m starving. I could eat eight hamburgers right now.”

“I could eat ten hamburgerth,” Sammy says, his face split in half with a giant grin.

“Oh yeah?” says Dev. “Well, I could eat fifty hamburgers right now.”

“Well, I could eat twenty trillion billion gadillion hamburgerth right now,” says Sammy.

Dev shakes his head. “Dude . . . you are seriously hungry.”

“Yeah, I know.” His voice switches to pitiful mode. “My mommy made me eat cookieth thith morning for breakfatht. It’th not really food.”

I laugh in indignation and turn around to glare at my son. “You little traitor. You asked me for those cookies. You said it was the only thing your sore tummy could eat.”

“Yeth, but you shouldn’t give me everything I athk for becauth you’ll thpoil me.”

I turn around and don’t say another thing. Those words are not Sammy’s; they’ve come directly from Miles’s mouth, and I will not be sharing my opinion on that today. Not with my sweet, innocent little boy there to hear it, anyway. Bastard Miles.

“Hmmm,” Dev says under his breath. “Trouble in paradise?”

I shake my head and mumble back. “Don’t even ask.”

Dev pulls into the McDonald’s parking lot and slides into a space that I could have sworn his car would not fit into if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.