“Guys, if you love me, you will go to bed without a peep tonight.”

They blinked up at me, then Piper sneezed so violently that Jacob jumped, bawling immediately.

I pointed a finger at her while I hefted him in my arms and tried to soothe him.

“I’m serious. Nonno and Grandma will be here in,” I trailed off to look at my watch, swallowing the panic that clawed up my throat, “forty-two minutes. And I need every bit of their attention, and I just don’t get it when you’re in the room.”

So here’s the thing about my parents: they kinda sucked. But then they had moments, this whisper-thin line that they walked that occasionally allowed them to tiptoe over into ‘decent parent’ territory. They taught Julia and I how to work our asses off. They were pictured somewhere under the word dichotomy in the dictionary. Their personal definition went a little something like this…

- Italian and Catholic (my father)

- WASPy country-clubber with family bloodlines back to the Mayflower (my mother. And the Mayflower thing was just what I’d been told. Without proof, I highly freaking doubted it)

- a raging desire to add to the family tree via male offspring

- even if that meant single ol’ me was the one doing it, they couldn’t care less (see earlier reference to my extremely Catholic dichotomous parents)

But one amazing thing they did for me and Julia was place money in a trust that we could access at the age of twenty for one of two reasons; real estate and education.

Julia used hers for a house and to get her master’s degree. Much to my parents’ chagrin, cosmetology school was my educational withdrawal from said account. Ivy League it was not, so they didn’t feel like they could brag about it to their friends. Sorry, but I could name every muscle, bone and ligament in the skull of a human being and came out of school with a bill like one fiftieth of the size of an undergrad, so they could just kiss my ass.

Anyway … that was a tangent. Until I turned thirty—when I would have total access to all those zeroes—I wouldn’t be able to draw from the trust without written consent from both parents. I could go apply for a loan, or use my Home Equity Line of Credit, but that meant paying interest for a couple years until I could pay it off with trust money.

All of this was why I found myself hurrying to get the kids to bed, because my parents were due to my house at my invitation. They’d seen us the day before, and as much as they really did love the twins, I knew I wanted to have this particular conversation without interruptions. I’d had all these plans, make a homemade Italian meal to butter up my dad.

Then Jacob’s diaper exploded.

Everywhere.

Up his back, down his legs. Onto my shoes.

‘Breathe through your nose’ takes on an entirely new level of meaning in such situations. Emergency bath time was shoved into the schedule, putting me behind by just enough that my chances of making dinner kept getting smaller and smaller. By the time I was zipping my now sweet-smelling babies into their pajamas, I finally felt my stress level lower incrementally. The whole ‘no shit smell’ thing.

Jacob cooed happily when I pressed a kiss to his chubby little belly.

“Mister,” I whispered with my forehead pressed against his, “you have an uncanny sense of timing.”

He grabbed a chunk of my hair and yanked, which made me think all sorts of four letter words because effing ouch. While I untangled his fingers, Piper pulled herself up using my legs and grabbed her bottle off the changing table.

“Thatta girl,” I told her. Watching her reach for her light purple bottle and plop on the floor so she could drink it was funny, and I was proud that she seemed to take after me in going after exactly what she wanted. But it was just another one of those little zingers, like I pricked my finger on a safety pin that was hiding at the bottom of an old purse. The shock of it being there was almost worse than the pain of the action itself.

It was just me to rock them to sleep at night. Just me to make sure that they both got their baths done regularly, just me to go in and soothe them when they woke up in the middle of the night. Thankfully that was happening less and less, but there was no relief, no timeout, no substituting players. No one that I could roll over and punch and say, Hey! It’s your turn tonight because Mama is tired.

If I turned and looked over my shoulder to share a smile with someone because Piper couldn’t wait thirty seconds for her nighttime bottle, the doorway would be empty. Like he could sense the direction of my thoughts, Jacob laid his head on my shoulder and snuggled close to me. I took a few precious seconds to rub his back, breathe in his fresh, soapy scent before I turned him on my lap and gave him his own bottle. There may not be anyone to share a smile with, but these two … they were all mine. And soon, probably faster than I could ever imagine, they’d be old enough that they could smile with me over the things in the life we’d experience together.

Once Piper was situated next to him, I gently rocked the extra wide glider that my parents had bought as a gift when they were born and we read a book. The cadence of the sweetly rhyming words and the motion of the chair made the room quiet and still, my babies drowsy now that their bellies were full.

I left Jacob sitting in the corner of the chair while he finished his bottle and laid Piper down in her crib. I rubbed the downy softness of her hair and followed the line of her nose with the tip of my finger.

“Sweet dreams, my brave, strong girl,” I whispered.

She looked up at me but stayed on her back, the blinking of her lids getting slower and slower. Jacob snuggled into the corner of his crib like he always did.

“Good night, my sweet, handsome boy.”

Without a peep from either one, I tiptoed out of the room and only started breathing normally again once I’d eased their bedroom door shut behind me. One down, I thought as I took a deep breath and resigned myself to ordering takeout for me and my parents, and one really big one to go.

* * *

“What’s wrong with the place you work?” My dad asked after he’d carefully set his pizza back down on my fancy plates.

Maybe I’d run out of time to cook, but they were getting the nice serveware. I wasn’t raised in a barn.

From the other side of the table, my mom stayed inconspicuously quiet, her eyes trained on my father like he’d let loose some sort of signal for her to decode. After thirty-two years of marriage, they had it down to a friggin science, which was annoying in times like that.

“Nothing’s wrong with it, per se,” I answered carefully. “But I’m almost a year into my new ‘normal’ and it’s getting harder and harder to balance my work schedule with the twins schedule. If I work from home, I’ll have a lot more flexibility. I’ve done a lot of research and talked to a few of the girls that used to rent chairs and now have salons in their house. The money that they save in commuting and chair rental is offset by higher utilities at home, yes, but their clients like knowing that they can be flexible with their schedules and have never complained about higher prices than they used to pay. My higher utilities will be a tax deduction, as will the space itself. And I won’t have to drive into downtown anymore.”

Slow your roll, Brooke. I could feel myself veering into begging territory, which I haaaaaated. While this was technically my money, it was still just out of my grasp, and would be for a couple years. A couple long years from where I was currently sitting, facing the firing squad of Marcus and Catalina Rossi. The fact that I even had to do this, had to convince my parents that I wasn’t squandering my trust fund, that I was making a sound business decision grated against all the parts of my personality that led me to become a cosmetologist in the first place.

I never wanted their mold. I never wanted to be a cookie cutter country club queen, in a job that bored me to tears and was backed up by a flimsy, insubstantial piece of paper that cost me six figures to earn. Doing what I wanted once I was out of high school was my first true act of independence, so this three-ring circus made me want to rip my hair out one follicle at a time.

My dad only hummed, gave my mom a quick, meaningful glance. “How much would it cost?”

My heartbeat thrummed instantly. “I can get you a final estimate in a couple days. I have a rough idea of the layout, and a friend of Julia’s is going to come over and give me some design ideas. Once I have those, the contractor will be able to firm up all the numbers for me.”

The contractor. Michael effing Whitfield. This was all his fault, actually. Giving me great ideas, making me ask my crazy-ass parents for money that I earned simply by being born.

If he hadn’t charmed the figurative pants off of me a couple days ago, I’d hate him for it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t scrape from my memory the way he smiled after he programmed his number into my cell, right before he left my house.

Michael was like a magnet. Every time he spread his mouth in a wide smile, he pulled at me. The scruff around his mouth, the press of dimples into his skin, the way his eyes shined despite the depth of color, and I reacted on a molecular level, somewhere far beneath the surface of my skin.

It was the absolute last thing I needed in my life, but I would do my damndest to ignore it, because he was helping me out big time.

My mom cleared her throat and I blinked at her. Right. Parents. Money.

Quit thinking about Michael, you dirty little ho, I screamed in my head.

“Can you show us where you’d put it?” she asked, small, polite smile firmly in place and not a single silvery blonde hair where it shouldn’t be.

“Absolutely.”

I cleared the dishes while they finished the red wine in their glasses. They followed me down the hallway, and I started showing them Michael’s ideas.

My dad scraped at the side of his face with blunt fingertips. “Blowing out that wall into the garage won’t be cheap.”

“I know. But with the extra space, I can keep the washer and dryer up here and not have to go up and down those basement steps every time I need to do a load.” I laughed and briefly lifted my eyebrows. “And that … is pretty much every single day now. It will only get worse as the twins get older.”

My mom’s nose wrinkled delicately. Everything she did was delicately. “Your laundry room in the same place as your paying customers? That’s a little gauche, don’t you think?”

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Feel the air fill your body, feel your heart rate decrease so you don’t start breaking shit in front of your parents.

I smiled pleasantly. At least I thought I did. My mom’s eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly, which probably meant it was a giant fail. “That’s partially why Julia’s friend is going to come over, so she can give me ideas on stuff like that.”

My mom tilted her head. “Who’s this friend? Do we know her?”

Translation- Is she from a wealthy, recognizable family?

My pleasant, not-so-pleasant smile felt strained. Still needed the money, still needed to not be a bitch to my mom who just loved to play the social bingo game. “I don’t think you know her, no. She’s the sister of one of Cole’s friends. I’ve never actually met Anna, but Julia called her for me and she said she was happy to help out free of charge.”

While I adored my brother-in-law, Cole, my parents were still at the strained politeness stage of their relationship with him since he and Julia got remarried. Thankfully, the magic words free of charge were enough to break their obvious annoyance at the connection to Cole. Probably shouldn’t mention that the contractor was a friend of Cole’s, too.

My dad was staring into the laundry room like it would magically shift in front of his eyes, but thinking visually was never his thing. He was in finance, so numbers, black and white, patterns and data … that he could do.

“Dad,” I said, pausing until he’d turned in my direction again. “This is a good business decision. It’s also a good personal decision. I won’t let this consume my life, and I’ll still have fairly set hours, but this allows me to truly be my own boss and set my own course. My success won’t be dependent on anyone except myself. It’s all on my shoulders. And I want it there. Every single ounce of pressure. I want it there.”

There was a fire in my gut, stoked higher and higher with every word out of my mouth. I wanted this. And if they said no, I’d find a way to make it happen.

He looked at my mom, but I kept my eyes trained on him. After another quick glance over his shoulder at the laundry room, he nodded. “Okay.”

The breath caught in my throat. “Really?”

Another nod.

“Thank you,” I breathed, clasping my hands over my chest to stop from flinging myself at him, at both of them. An emotionally demonstrative family we were not, folks. If I tackle-hugged my mom, she’d have an aneurysm. “Do you need me to send over the estimate once I get it?”

My dad smiled at me and opened his arms. No hesitation, I flew at him and hugged him so tightly that he laughed. “We’ll sign the money over as soon as you need it, passerotta.”

Damn it all, of course he had to break out the nickname of my childhood. Little sparrow. Tears weren’t even an option in my weakened emotional state.

“Thank you, Dad.”

He clapped me on the back and the hug was over. My mom was smiling, a bit more warmly now, and I gave her a vastly more restrained embrace.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Don’t prove us wrong, Brooke,” she said as I pulled back. The slightly cool edge to her words was a cold bucket of water to whatever warmth I’d felt. Effectively put in my place, I nodded. Honest to goodness, if they showed even one iota of that conditional affection to my kids, I’d be done. Finito.

File it away under ‘shitty things my parents did that made it really easy to know what not to do with own my kids’. Now that list, that was constantly evolving. But I swallowed it down, because I refused to let her ruin the evening for me.

“I won’t,” I said firmly.