Finding Forgiveness novel Chapter 21

PART 2

One week later,

"Cato where are your shoes?" Leo called from the hallway.

The chaos of the school run had begun and Leo and I had the unwieldy task of getting eight kids fed, dressed and ready to leave the house.

"Cato!" Leo repeated.

Of course, Cato was far too busy tackling Mathias on the living room floor to reply.

"Where are his fucking shoes?" I heard Leo mumble to himself. "Jesus Christ."

I stifled a laugh before realising that those were shouts of pain rather than squeals of laughter coming from Mathias. 

"Cato, get off your brother. You're hurting him," I said as I tried to juggle Zacharias and his bottle in one hand and cutting Lili's toast in half with the other.

"Sorry," Cato said hugging Mathias.

"Are you alright, sweetie?" I asked as Cato wiped his tears. 

"Look, Mathy," Cato said realising his attempts to comfort him weren't working. "You can borrow my dinosaur for the WHOLE week!"

He held out his favourite toy dinosaur to Mathias who's face instantly lit up. 

Crisis averted.

"Mommy, I don't want to go to school today," Silas complained as he appeared sullen faced in the kitchen.

"You have to go to school, Si," Leo replied. "We've had this discussion many times in the last few months."

"I thought you loved school," I said rubbing his shoulder.

"Not anymore, Mama," he groaned climbing up onto the table and lying on it face down. "I hate it. There are so many rules!"

"There are rules here too," I said. "And one of them is no climbing on the kitchen table. Come on, find your bag and we'll talk about this later."

He dragged himself away to find his bag. Despite being a fairly trivial matter, it saddened me that I hadn't been around to be there for him if this had been going on for months. I had been completely unaware of it. 

I didn't have much time to dwell on the subject though before the twins appeared in the doorway.

"Oh girls," I said noticing what they were wearing. "They're Mommy and Daddy's clothes, aren't they? You can't go to school like that."

"Why not?" Marie asked.