The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag: All Washed Up: (Book 3 in the Misadventures of the Laundry Hag series) Read Free Page A

life, I intended to come back as a twelve-year-old boy. They didn’t worry about anything beyond the next action movie or shoot-em-up video game.
     Over by the entertainment section, a couple wearing stained sweats argued over a five dollar DVD. A flock of working moms sent each other dangerous looks as they raced through the grocery section at warp speed. An elderly man wearing a Panama Jack hat was within seconds of an apoplectic fit as he tried to work the check out your own stuff aisle. One Direction bleated from the tinny speakers and I was fairly sure my helper and the wheelchair-bound greeter at the front door were they only people who worked in the store.
     “My head might explode if I have to come back here. Cart. Now.”
     “—try to keep it gender neutral since you don’t know which it is yet,” Edith continued. Obviously, she’d missed our exchange.
     I scanned a nearby table display and picked up a three pack of onesies in earth tones that ranged from pale gold to chocolate. “Like this?”
     The woman shook her head. “Oh no, honey. Brown is the new pink.”
     “What happened to the old pink?” Neil had arrived, a giant box of diapers under each arm.
     “It’s the color formerly known as pink. Now just a symbol. Where’s Kenny?”
     Neil tipped his head to the side and nodded back the way he’d come. “He wanted to know what kind of wipes.”
     “There are different types? You’re shitting me.”
     “Try the sensitive skin ones,” My tiny savior recommended. “Better safe than sorry, I always say. Now Louise Van Hatten’s granddaughter….”
     Josh reappeared, with a cart. It had a crooked wheel that squeaked on every rotation. My eyelid twitched in time to the sound.
     “Can I get M&M’s?” Josh asked.
     I dumped the stuff into a cart and swung it around. “Yeah. Hurry up!”
     “I’ll help Kenny.” Neil dropped his load and sprinted back the other direction.
     “Don’t forget the butt gunk!” I shouted after him. A couple strolling by cast me a wide-eyed look.
     “How are you set up for equipment?” my helper asked.
     Equipment? I goggled.
     “Crib, changing table, car seat. You know you can’t bring a baby home from the hospital unless you have a properly installed car seat.”
     “Dear God.” How had I ever thought we were prepared for this?
     Several hundred dollars poorer and with the camper crammed to the roof with Walmart shopping bags, we finally made it to the hospital. We charged into the maternity ward like a herd of wildebeests, only to draw to a stop when we saw the flurry of activity outside Penny’s room.
     Marty, dressed in surgical scrubs, shifted anxiously from foot to foot as a bevy of hospital personnel scrambled to and fro.
     “Sprout?” The nickname, the one my mom had christened him with as a teenager when growing fits caused him to sprout out of his clothes biweekly, left my lips automatically. He appeared as gangly and lost now as he had when our parents died. My spine froze as the medical scents permeated my olfactory sense. I swallowed and focused on my brother. “What’s wrong?”
     Marty didn’t look at me, his gaze was fixed on the door. “They’re prepping her for surgery. They keep losing the baby’s heartbeat. It’s so small…it’s too soon.” He took a deep breath and shuddered. “They need to do a C-section.”
     I cursed and struggled for words of reassurance, floundered, then reached for his hand. It was the best I could do.
     I caught sight of Penny as they wheeled her out of her room and down the hall to surgery. She looked painfully young and as frightened as Marty, but smiled faintly when she saw us. Her eyes fixed on him like he was a life preserver. He straightened his shoulders, no longer a lost little boy, but a man with a purpose. Though I still had my doubts about the two of them as a couple and as parents, there was something about that sweet, intimate look. It settled in my heart and