The Enchiladas I Took to His Ex

What He Asked the Second Time

That third Saturday was the last one in March, two weeks before his birthday. The last of the snowbanks had shrunk down to dirty gray lumps along the driveway, and Crystal and I had our coats zipped to our chins.

After a while Kaden tossed his glove to his dad and came and sat down on the step next to me. He had a smear of mud on one knee. He was holding the baseball, just for something to hold.

“Jessica,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”

The same words he had said on that step a few weeks before. My heart did a funny little thing.

“Sure, bud.”

“Can I sleep over at your house sometime? Like the whole night? Mom said I had to ask you.”

I looked at Crystal. She was looking straight ahead at the yard, but she was smiling a little. She had known he was going to ask. She nodded, just once.

“You’d have to sleep on the floor,” I said. “We don’t have a spare bed yet.”

“I have a sleeping bag. It’s a good one. It’s rated to twenty degrees.”

“Well, then,” I said. “I don’t see why not.”

He grinned so wide his whole face moved. “Can I bring my glove? Dad said we could throw in your yard in the morning.”

“You can bring whatever you want.”

“Can it be the Friday before my party?” He turned the baseball over in his hands. “At your house.” He stopped. He thought about it. “I mean, our house. At Dad’s. At our house.”

He said it like he was trying the words out. Like he was checking whether they fit.

I could not answer for a second. I just nodded.

He jumped up and ran back out to the yard, yelling to his dad that it was the Friday before the party.

Shane was standing by the snowbank with both gloves, and he had heard every word, and he was looking up at the sky the way men do when they are trying not to cry in front of their ex-wife’s duplex.

Crystal leaned over and bumped my shoulder with hers.

“He’s been practicing that,” she said quietly. “In the car. All week. He wanted to get it right.”

“He got it right.”

“Yeah,” she said. “He did.”