“Of course. Well, it started the obsession.”
“Because she’s a fan of alliteration and rhyme?” Picture books tended to feature both heavily, butBilbo the Armadilloreally leaned into it. Bilbo lived in Amarillo and washed with a Brillo and ate picadillo. “Or because it’s from an aunt?” Rowan was nosey about their family dynamics, and the mystery of Kaira’s mother intrigued him.
Jordy hummed thoughtfully. “Probably both.” Rowan bit his tongue and waited. “Emma sent it for Christmas. She couldn’t visit until February. Kaira took the book as a promise, I guess.”
Rowan could picture it. Kaira wandering around a large house with a book clasped to her chest and asking for repeated rereads all hours. “Wore out the book in a month, huh?”
Jordy huffed a soft laugh. Rowan was starting to adore Jordy’s understated reactions. “Almost wore out my patience.” He shot Rowan a look, like he was about to spill a secret. “I had to buy the sequels just to save my sanity.”
God, that was adorable.
“So now she loves armadillos. Has Emma apologized yet?”
Jordy snorted. “She sends Kaira something armadillo every chance she gets. Just sent a stuffed toy for her last birthday.”
“Ah, an enabler, then. I think I like her.”
“You probably would.”
“Armadillos!”
The kids stood at a fence, staring into a wooded enclosure with a couple of lumbering gray rocks. One of them seemed to be feasting near a log.
“Look, Mr. Rowan!”
“I’m looking,” Rowan said as he stepped closer. Unlike Bilbo, this armadillo appeared to prefer insect salad to picadillo. According to the sign on the fence, her name was Alice, or possibly Arnold. He couldn’t tell its gender or, for that matter, distinguish its facial features. “What do you think? Which one is this?”
Kaira squinted at the little plaque with the animals’ pictures and names and proclaimed, “That one’s Alice. ’Cause she has eight bands, see? And Arnold has nine.”
Next to Rowan, Jordy covered a laugh with a cough. Well, Rowan might have expected she’d be better at identifying armadillos than he was. “Not Bilbo?” he teased.
He was surprised when Clement spoke up from his other side. “Mr. Rowan, that’s not Bilbo the armadildo—”
Oh Lord. Oh no. The laugh caught in Rowan’s throat, so high up he thought he might choke on it. Helplessly, he looked from Clement to Jordy, who was biting his lips, his cheeks an adorable pink.
Help me, Rowan tried to say with his mind.I don’t want to hurt this kid’s feelings!
Jordy’s expression said pretty plainly that Rowan was on his own.
“—Bilbo the armadildo lives in Amarillo.”
Finally, after several hitching breaths, Rowan managed to speak, squeaking out the words past the laughter he was holding at the top of his lungs. “Ah yes.” It felt like laughter was going to start leaking out his eyes. “Silly me! How could I forget?”
Kaira only shook her head at him. “You’re funny.”
Now the laugh did escape. “You’refunny,” Rowan shot back, poking her in the side, making her giggle too. “Now, where’s Arnold, then, hmm? Do you see him?”
Jordy stepped up on Kaira’s other side, and they all peered into the enclosure. The sign indicated armadillos were generally solitary unless they were mating or it was wintertime—even armored mammals liked a good cuddle in the cold, apparently—so Rowan concentrated on the farther reaches.
“There?” He pointed.
Jordy leaned closer to follow the line of his arm. “That’s a rock.”
“How can you tell?”
Jordy gave him an amused look. “There’s moss growing on it.”
So there was.
