Page 20 of Follow My Heart

My heart twisted. I hated being this far away from Faith. “It will only take a minute.”

“You know, Faith is busier now. She’s going to be involved in more activities at school. She has friends, and eventually she’ll have a boyfriend.”

“She’s twelve.” She was still my little girl, wasn’t she? I couldn’t believe that Faith was so preoccupied with her social life that she didn’t want to talk to me.

“Can you please tell her I’m on the phone?” I didn’t want to mention our separation agreement, but nightly phone calls were referenced. We weren’t supposed to block access when the other parent had physical custody. I wanted to maintain the connection we built over the weekend even when she was with Stacy.

Stacy sighed. “Before I hand you off, can you take her again this weekend? I want to do something with Phil, and he doesn’t want to have all the kids along.”

I didn’t like that Stacy didn’t want to include Faith in her weekend plans. But I’d take any opportunity to spend more time with Faith. Then we could meet Violet at her shop on Monday for her to show us how to make a new flavor. “Sure.”

“Great. Thanks.” I heard her footsteps, the door creak open to Faith’s room. If I was still living there, I would have oiled it. But it wasn’t my responsibility anymore.

“Faith. Your father’s on the phone.”

A few seconds later, Faith said, “Dad?”

“Hey, baby. How are you?” I missed her so much. There was something about not being able to see her every night that tore me up inside.

“Good.” Then she rattled off everything that happened at school that day, the slight from her best friend, the gross school lunch, how hard her math teacher was, and then finally, she paused to yawn.

“I’d better let you get to bed.”

“I love you, Dad.”

“I love you too.”

“When are you moving back?”

I hesitated because I wasn’t sure I would be. “This position is temporary. but it’s up to the higher-ups where I go next. Could be here or in D.C.”

“Not Virginia?” she asked hopefully.

“I already worked there for too many years. They like to move us around. Kind of like the military.” It was the closest thing I could compare it to. My life wasn’t my own, and I got paid to be on call and move every few years.

“That sucks.”

“It does because I miss you.”

“I’ll see you this weekend?”

“Yeah, I just talked to your mother about it. I’ll pick you up on Friday night, and we’ll grab pizza. How does that sound?”

“I can’t wait to go to Violet’s shop to see how she makes ice cream.”

“Me too.” I was looking forward to spending time with my daughter and Violet.

We said good night, and I fell back on my pillows. I was amped up from my run and the talk with Faith. She hadn’t asked for my opinion on anything; she just wanted me to listen. And I hoped that since I did, she’d come to me if she ever needed help. Like if she was drunk at a party or was in trouble.

Parenthood was stressful, especially when I wasn’t close by. I couldn’t drop in at a moment’s notice. It wasn’t ideal. But I didn’t see any way around it. My job was here for now.

CHAPTER 6

VIOLET

Iexperimented with new flavors all week. I still hadn’t come up with something that could be purple. The only option I found online involved yams. There was no chance my clientele would go for that.

I bought the local favorite, Berger cookies, with its soft vanilla cookie and generous chocolate icing. I broke the cookies into large chucks and mixed them into vanilla ice cream. But it was too bland. It ended up tasting like vanilla ice cream with crumbs. Next I tried swirling the fudge icing into vanilla ice cream, then dropping in the chunks of cookie. That was better.

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