More grumbling.

“Right, Louie?” I glanced into the rearview mirror to see the upcoming kindergartner in his booster seat, grinning and nodding.

“Yeah,” he replied, totally cheery.

Seriously, everything about that kid made me smile. Not that Josh didn’t, but not in the same way as Lou. “Are you worried about starting school?” I asked the little one. We’d talked about him starting kinder plenty of times in the past, and every single time, he had seemed stoked about it. There was no reason for me to think otherwise. My biggest worry had been that he might bawl his eyes out when I dropped him off, but Louie wasn’t really that type of kid. He’d loved daycare.

Ginny had warned me that I’d cry taking him to his first day, but there was no way I could or would break down in front of him. If I cried, he’d cry even if he had no idea why. And I’d be damned if that happened. When I’d taken his picture in front of the house a little while earlier, I may have had one little tear in my eye, but that was all I was willing to give up.

“Nope,” he replied in that happy five-year-old voice that made me want to snuggle him until the end of time.

“See, J? Lou’s not worried. You shouldn’t be either.” In the rearview mirror, Josh’s head drooped before falling to the side to rest against the glass window. But it was the huge sigh that came out of such a young body that really got me. “What is it?” I asked.

He shook his head a little.

“Tell me what’s really wrong.”

“Nothing.”

“You know I’m not going to drop it until you tell me. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” he insisted.

I sighed. “J, you can tell me anything.”

With his forehead to the glass, he pressed his mouth to it, steam fogging up the area around his lips. “I was thinking about Dad, okay? He always took me to school the first day.”

Fuck. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Last year, he’d gotten pretty grumpy about starting the school year then too. Only it hadn’t been this bad. Of course, I missed Drigo, too. But I didn’t tell Josh, no matter how much I needed to sometimes. “You know he would tell you—”

“There’s no crying in baseball,” he finished off for me with a sigh.

Rodrigo had been firm and tough, but he’d loved his kids, and there wasn’t a single thing he didn’t think they could do. But he’d been that way with everyone he loved, including me. A knot formed in my throat and had me trying to clear it as discreetly as possible.

Was I doing the right thing with Josh? Or was I being too tough on him? I didn’t know, and the indecision burrowed a notch straight into my heart. It was moments like these that reminded me I had no idea what the hell I was doing, much less what the end result would be when they grew up, and that was terrifying.

“Your new school is going to be great. Trust me, J.” When he didn’t say anything, I turned to look at him over my shoulder. “You trust me, don’t you?”

And just like that, he was back to being a pain in the ass. He rolled his eyes. “Duh.”

“Duh my ass—butt. I’m going to drop you off at the pound on the way home.”

“Oooh,” Louie cooed, forever an instigator.

“Shut up, Lou,” Josh snapped.

“No, thank you.”

“Oh my God, both of you be quiet,” I joked. “Let’s play the quiet game.”

“Let’s not,” Josh replied. “Have you found me a new Select team?”

Damn it. I slid a look to the side window, suddenly feeling guilty that I still hadn’t even started looking for a new baseball team for him. Once upon a time, I would have lied to him and said that I had but that wasn’t the kind of relationship I wanted to have with the boys. So I told him the truth. “No, but I will.”

I didn’t have to turn around to sense the accusation in his gaze, but he didn’t make me feel bad over it. “Okay.”

None of us said anything else as I pulled up to the curb at the school and put the car into park. Both boys sat there, looking at me expectantly, making me feel like a shepherd to my sheep.

A shepherd who didn’t always know the right direction to go.

I could only try my best and hope it was good enough. Then again, wasn’t that the story to everyone’s lives? “Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”

* * *

“Miss Lopez!”

I shut the car door with my hip later that day, with what felt like fifty pounds of grocery bags hanging off my wrists. Louie was already at the front door of our house, the two smallest bags from our shopping trip in each of his hands. While I usually tried to avoid taking them to the grocery store, the trip had been inevitable. The salon wasn’t scheduled to open until the next day, and I was partially thankful that I’d been able to pick them up their first day of school. Considering that even Louie hadn’t looked like school had been everything he might have hoped it would be, grocery shopping had gone well; I’d only had to threaten the boys twice. Josh paused halfway to his brother with full hands too, a frown growing on his face as he looked around.

“Miss Lopez!” the frail voice called out again, barely heard, from somewhere close but not that close. I didn’t think anything of it as I stepped toward them, watching as Josh’s gaze narrowed in on something behind me.

“I think she’s talking to you,” he suggested, his eyes staying locked on whatever it was he was looking at.