JJ wasn’t in high school anymore, Dawson knew that. And Shiloh had just gotten her driver’s license.
“Yeah, if you could get it out, that would be great.” JJ straightened to toss away the antibacterial wipes he was using to clean the floor. He pulled out a few more and added, “Jewel,Mason, time for dinner.”
“I eat,” Lara said. “I hungry.”
“Just a minute, sweetie,” JJ said. “I want you to finish your popsicle first.” He met Dawson’s eyes, who nodded.
“How long since you graduated?” he asked, shooting a look over to Caroline, who’d come to help Shiloh get out dinner.
“A year or so,” JJ said.
“It’s almost two years now,” Shiloh said. JJ shot her a glare, but she simply kept working. “What? It’s true. You’ll have been graduated for two years in just a few months.”
“But it’s not two years yet,” he growled.
No matter what, that put him at least four or five years older than Shiloh. And she wasn’t even the one Dawson worried about. “What are you doing?” he asked. “College? Trade school? Working your ranch?”
“Just working the ranch right now, sir,” he muttered.
“And babysitting for your cousin,” Dawson said.
“Yeah,” JJ said. “I’m the manny so Ollie and Rory can go out once a week. They pay good, and I’m trying to earn enough to go to the Dominican Republic on that mission tour this summer.”
“Oh, sure,” Dawson said, as he’d heard the pastor talk about that. He also knew the Walkers had plenty of money. Like billions of dollars plenty. JJ would never need to work another day in his life, and he’d be fine. “What about after that?” he asked as Lara finished up her popsicle.
“I don’t know.” JJ took the red-stained stick and tossed it in the trash with the last of the wipes. “Did you know exactly what to do with your life, Dawson?”
He looked at the young man, and JJ reminded Dawson so much of himself. “I mean, I always knew I wanted to work the ranch. So I suppose.”
He handed Lara to JJ and said, “Baby, tell us what happened.”
“I be running so fast,” she said, and now that she wasn’t all nasally from the crying and her mouth wasn’t filled with blood, Dawson could understand her. “Like, zoom! Zoom! Zoom! And I fell-led, my shoe just pop-ped off, and I go flying down. Bang and boom!”
JJ grinned at her. “Bang and boom aren’t good.”
She looked at him with wide, earnest eyes. “I lost-ed my toof, JJ. See? It gone.” She lifted up her lip, and at least her gums had stopped bleeding. Dawson couldn’t see any other damage either. “I ha- a toof ‘ere t’day.” She dropped her lip. “Now, no toof.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I swallow it. Now I sad.” The saddest tears in the world slid down her face, but Dawson had to turn away to hide his smile. He caught Caroline watching him, and she had the warmest smile on her face too.
“Why are you sad?” JJ asked. “It’s just a tooth. They’ll all come out, sweetie.”
“But I get no prize from Toof Fairy.”
Ah. All the things came together, and Dawsonturned his grin on JJ. The young man looked stumped, though, and Dawson couldn’t believe he hadn’t lived through little children believing in fantastical creatures.
“Well, I happen to know that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t need the tooth,” Caroline said, surprising both him and JJ. They turned toward her with eyebrows raised, and she plucked Lara from JJ’s arms. “My brother lost a tooth at school once, and his teacher put it in one of those plastic containers that snaps closed. He wore it on a string around his neckallthrough the day. But when he got home, he realized it had popped open while he was playing, and the tooth was gone.”
She set Lara in the booster seat at the table, and she held everyone’s attention now, Dawson’s included.
“And you know what?” She put a bowl of macaroni and cheese in front of Lara. No chicken nuggets like the other kids had. “The next morning, he had a dollar bill under his pillow. The Tooth Fairyknew.”
“I got a five-dollar bill for my last tooth,” Jewel said.
“Yes, mm hm,” Caroline said without missing a beat. “The Tooth Fairy has to account for inflation, I guess.”
Dawson burst out laughing then, because it was just too funny to think of the Tooth Fairy having to deal with inflation. Caroline grinned back at him, and he swore he felt the house shift a little. Or maybe that was just his position in time and space, and that he’d fallen slightly.
Fallen in love with the stunning woman now servinga two-year-old she didn’t know another dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget.