All About You (All Series Book 6) Read Online Free PDF

their best behavior because he wasn’t in the best of moods. Cranky was probably a better description. He was exhausted and had no one to blame but himself.
    Last night at dinner, he placed the bowl of elbow macaroni mixed with butter in front of Trey, and a meatball cut up on the side. Just the way Trey liked it.
    Trey was a picky eater, but then again, so were all four-year-olds. Or so everyone assured him. “Eat up, scout. How was school?”
    Trey looked down at his plate and moved the macaroni around, but didn’t pick up a piece to eat. As shy and quiet as Trey was, he usually talked about school a little. And if he wasn’t talking about school, then he was talking about how much he loved having his favorite foods. Since there were very few things Trey would eat for dinner, Finn heard about them almost every night.
    But tonight, Trey was quiet and just shrugged and pushed the food around some more.
    “Not hungry?” Finn asked.
    Finn’s mother repeatedly told him, “He won’t starve. He’ll eat when he is hungry. The worst thing you can do is force it down him.” So he listened to his mother’s words, however much he might have disagreed with her. It wasn’t as if he had anyone else he could ask for advice. It was all him. Him and Trey, from pretty much day one.
    He watched as Trey picked up the fork with a piece of meatball and put it in his mouth, then chewed and swallowed. Okay, maybe his mom was right. So he tried another tactic. “Do anything fun today?”
    Another shrug of the shoulders and another bite of food. This single parenting was some tough shit. Finn gave up, went back to his own pasta with sauce and meatballs, and started to eat.
    Trey would talk when he was ready, just like he ate when he was ready.
    “We’re doing a special project, but I’m not supposed to say.”
    The words were almost whispered, as if Trey was afraid by voicing them he might get in trouble.
    “What project is that? You can tell me. It can be our secret.”
    Trey looked around the kitchen nervously, which almost had Finn laughing since it was just the two of them in the house. “I don’t want to do the project, though.”
    What could this be about? It was Trey’s first year of preschool. It was almost over with, just another two months to go, and this was the first time Trey had said he didn’t want to participate. “How come?”
    “Because I don’t have one.”
    “Have one what?”
    “A mother,” Trey whispered. “We’re making flower pots for our mothers for Mother’s Day.”
    Finn sighed deeply. He knew these things would come up, he expected them, but not now, not this early; maybe later on when he could figure out what to say.
    It wasn’t a secret that Trey’s mother wasn’t around. But how do you tell your child that his mother didn’t want him? That she didn’t want to be a mother at all, and just picked up and left with no explanation.
    He refused to think about the few short messages he’d gotten over the years. No explanation there either, more like threats. Threats that he’d put a stop to, that had forced him to prepare for the future.
    So instead, Finn usually hedged when Trey brought it up, saying things like, “You’ve got me, and we make a good team, don’t we?” or “What, you think I can’t take care of a little pipsqueak like you?” Then he’d toss him in the air until Trey forgot. Only now there was no way around it, not that he even knew how to address this.
    “I don’t have to do it, right?”
    Finn wanted to say no, that he didn’t, but he wouldn’t. Life wasn’t made that way. There were lots of kids who didn’t have mothers or fathers, or both. That didn’t give them a free pass to get out of assignments, either. He’d talk to the school about it tomorrow when he dropped Trey off.
    “How about you make it for me? I do everything a mother does, right?”
    “Everyone is talking about putting flowers on it because it’s a flower pot. You don’t want flowers.