Free B008DKAYYQ EBOK by Joyce Lamb Page A

carefully checked her expression, suppressing her building fury, as she lowered herself to a creaky, ladder-back chair.  
    Austin stared into the off-white fridge. “Um.”
    “How about peanut butter?” Cole asked. “I bet you’ve got that.”
    “You don’t have to do this, Cole,” she said. “I can feed myself.”
    Austin nodded. “She can. I’ve seen her do it a lot.”
    Cole let out a laugh, surprisingly loud and full, as Austin seized a chair and slid it across the floor to rest flush against the cabinets next to the refrigerator. Clambering onto the seat, he whipped open the nearest cupboard door. “You know what’s really good?”  
    “What?” Cole asked.  
    Bailey noticed he’d positioned himself so that he could catch Austin if he started to toppled off the chair. As much as she wanted him to go away, she was impressed by his interaction with her nephew. She figured he must have had plenty of practice with the kids she’d seen in the photos on his wall.  
    “Waffles with peanut butter,” Austin said. “Bailey loves that. We don’t have waffles here, but we used to eat that all the time when I lived with her.” He shot her a grin over his shoulder as he handed Cole a jar of peanut butter. “Remember, Bailey?” To Cole, he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial level. “She put chocolate chips on hers and pretended it wasn’t against the law.”
    “That’s against the law?” Cole gave Bailey a shocked look.
    She shrugged, resisting the urge to tell Austin to be quiet. She had never discouraged his chatter, and she wasn’t about to start now just because Cole might learn something potentially embarrassing. Besides, there wasn’t anything that could be worse than the lies that Daniel had told him.  
    “Yep. Somewhere.” Austin jumped off the chair and retrieved what was left of a loaf of bread from the nearly empty pantry. He paused to think. “Probably in Cuba. Lots of stuff is against the law in Cuba. Did you know that?”
    “No, I didn’t,” Cole said as Austin began working the twisty tie on the bread bag. “How did you know that?”
    Having won the struggle with the twisty tie, Austin plunged his hand into the bag and pulled out a piece of bread that he handed to Cole. “Sometimes,” he said, diving in for another slice, “these Cuban people show up out in the ocean in leaky boats and they have to be rescued. It’s because they ran away from home because everything is against the law there. Lots of stuff is against the law here, too. Dad is a lot meaner than Bailey.”
    “How so?”
    Bailey scooted her chair back and stood to open the refrigerator. “Does anyone besides me want orange juice?”
    Austin made a sour face. “Yuck! You’re going to have orange juice with peanut butter? That’s gross.”
    Cole arched a dark eyebrow at Bailey. “He’s right. It’s gross. And very likely against the law in Cuba.”
    Letting the fridge door close, she forced a smile. Cole seemed to be over their earlier argument, and that was fine with her. She wanted to forget it and all the overstuffed baggage that went with it. She wanted to sit back down and just rest. But that wasn’t going to happen, not after seeing the refrigerator’s barren insides.
    As casually as she could, she said, “I’m going to go wake up my brother while you two finish your analysis of Cuban law.”
     
    * * *
     
    Cole watched her go, wondering what had caused her growing, and shifting, tension. She’d relaxed when they’d come through the door, as if Austin’s hug had obliterated everything bad that had happened, including their disagreement. But, he reasoned, that could have been for the boy’s sake.  
    Austin thrust a butter knife into his hands. “You have to put on the peanut butter. I rip up the bread when I do it. Bailey says I go at it with too much gusto.”
    Cole accepted the knife and began to spread peanut butter across a piece of bread. “Does Bailey like jelly on her