Mom Over Miami Read Online Free

save the day—or whisk Hannah away from it all.
    “Can you hear me, dear? You have to excuse the poor connection, as I’m halfway around the world—in China!”
    “‘Peace. Be strong,’” Hannah muttered the verse from Daniel that her father had chosen as her personal axiom in childhood.
    “What, dear?”
    “Nothing Aunt Phiz. You just caught me at a bad time.” She said the last part louder, hoping against hope it would sink in with her aunt at last.
    But the boys’ voices rose in the background and drowned her out even in her own ears.
    Tessa’s cry had turned into a soggy-sounding cough.
    The dog pressed her entire lean muscled body against the sliding glass window. She gave out a mournful high-pitched whine begging to be let inside, and Stilton—who probably thought this qualified as helping—obliged.
    Every other boy in the living room leapt up, bowls of food held above their heads.
    Over the uproar, Aunt Phiz shouted, “What’s that, dear? I didn’t catch you at a bad time, did I?”
    Hannah considered using the receiver like a hammer and pounding it against her forehead; instead, she trapped it between her head and shoulder and got to work. First, she kicked the fridge door open with the toe of her shoe, then kept it from closing again with a well-timed swing of her hip. “I have Sam’s soccer team here, and Tessa seems to be getting a cold and I need to take her a juice bottle.”
    “Then take me along with you. I assume you’re on a cordless?”
    Hannah pushed aside juice boxes and milk jugs to retrieve the prepared bottle. “Yes, I’m on the cordless but…”
    “Good. I’ll tag along and goo for the baby in Cantonese. The tour group is celebrating our departure for India tonight, and I don’t know when I’ll get near a phone again.”
    Hannah sighed and braced the phone wedged against her shoulder in place with her “free” hand. “If there’s a celebration, maybe you should get back to it, Aunt Phiz.”
    She could just picture the tall, robust woman leading a wildly energetic dragon dance—the locals laughing and chanting as they wound this way and that behind her. “Hey, that could work.”
    “Of course it will work, just take the phone with you and—”
    “Grab your nachos with both hands, boys, and get in line. We’re snake-dancing all the way to the baby’s room.”
    Even as the boys hurried to get a spot in line and still keep their bowls above greyhound-head height, someone called, “We never do stuff like this at my mama’s house,”
    “I told you before, this is not your mama’s house.”
    “Nacho Mama’s house!” The boys laughed and wriggled behind her down the hallway.
    Aunt Phiz gave a quick rundown of the time she expected to arrive in Cincinnati two weeks hence.
    Hannah made it to the crib. She scooped her daughter up. Somehow she managed to cradle the phone against the child’s ear while getting the bottle into Tessa’s mouth and steering the soccer team back into the hallway with only a couple chip spills—which Squirrel happily lapped up.
    Everyone was being fed.
    Everyone was happy.
    Hannah sighed. Maybe she was getting a handle on this motherhood thing after all.
    “Oops!” The phone slid out from under Tessa’s warm pink cheek.
    Aunt Phiz, her unfamiliar dialect sounding to Hannah like a cartoon watch spring breaking, kept right on babbling in Cantonese baby talk.
    Hannah came to a full stop to catch the phone. Only after she did that did she realize the consequences.
    Th-whap!
    Thud.
    Crunch.
    “Ouch.”
    Then a momentary silence before:
    “Hey, the dog is licking the back of my head.”
    “That’s because it’s got cheese on it.”
    “Cheesehead! Cheesehead!”
    “Boys, boys!” Hannah spun around to find melted cheese product stuck in hair, all over shirts and even on the dog. Crushed chips littered the floor. One kid had stepped in his dropped bowl and had it stuck to his shoe.
    Unsure which disaster to tackle first, Hannah ordered,