Page 52 of Time Served in New York
Pandora nodded before she took an enormous bite and delicately wiped her mouth with the linen napkin beside her. She got to her feet and waved at us as she walked out of the room.
“I’m so ready to go home,” Paula said softly as she blew out a breath and stared at the floor. Suddenly, she laughed. “I’d have never imagined that I’d be back in New York dying to get back to Texas because I missed my tiger.”
“Until you said the tiger part, that sounded pretty normal,” I told her with a grin.
“Tiger?” Iris asked as she walked toward me with a plate in each hand. The burgers looked delicious, and I could see steam coming off the french fries that were piled high on the plate. “Arealtiger?”
I took the plates from Iris before I said, “She’s got a tiger, and Jenn has a pet skunk as well as a rooster that comes up higher than my knee.”
Iris raised her eyebrows and looked over at Paula. In her thick Brooklyn accent, she asked, “Is this normal?”
“Honey,” Paula said as she waved a french fry toward the doorway. “Nothing about any of us is normal, and our pets have nothing to do with it.”
14.
PAULA
“Now that you’re in charge, you won’t be able to come to Texas nearly as often,” I said as I opened the oven to check on the cinnamon rolls I’d put together for breakfast.
“But you can come see me anytime now,” Zach argued. “Me and the guys were joking the other day that whenever we want a dose of reality, we just have to go to Texas.”
“What do you mean?”
“Preacher refuses to call me by my name, no matter what I’m in charge of,” Zach said with a laugh. “Going to visit you in Texas and hanging out with the guys is humbling, that’s for sure.”
“If you’d get a decent haircut and quit wearing your hair like that, Preacher and the guys wouldn’t give you so much shit.”
“Yes, they would! They’d just find something else to give me shit about,” Zach argued. “But it’s honestly kind of nice.”
“I’d imagine it would be hard to get used to your mom asking you to grab some milk when you’ve got everyone at your beck and call.”
“I don’t haveeveryoneat my beck and call.”
“You live in a hotel like that show you used to watch when you were a kid. Oh my God, Zach! You’re livingThe Suite Life!”
“I can have you killed. You know that, right?”
“If you don’t fall in love with someone named Cody, the universe will weep.”
“Mom . . .”
“Zach and Cody. That would almost make up for the 396 million times I had to watch that freaking television show.”
“You really don’t give a shit about who I am now, do you?”
“Buddy boy, I remember the day you were born. I wiped your ass for years. Even if you were living in the White House, I’d still give you shit.”
“I think you would. No fear whatsoever. Poor Hook.”
“Boy, I grew up in a house with your grandfather. Nothing you’ve got going on scares me.”
“How’d it feel running into him the other day?” Zach asked.
I leaned forward onto the counter in front of his stool and sighed. “It was sad but exhilarating. Sad that he’s my father and there was still a little part of me that wanted him to love me, but exciting because I could look him in the face knowing there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to me.”
“Not one damn thing,” Zach agreed with a nod.
“He looked . . . broken.”
