Page 12 of Montana's Bravest

“I’m so sorry.” He’s about to dust paw prints off my top, but realizing they’re too close to my breasts, he opts to place his free hand on his own knee.

His presence and his hold have sent me on a ride in the clouds. I would stay in this heaven forever, but like a fallen angel, reality hits me.

Grace.

“My phone…” I murmur as I stand up.

“Here, here,” he says, gathering my phone and then handing it to me. He’s about to ask me something, but seeing an active call on the screen, he retreats a few paces.

“Yeah. I’m still here,” I respond to a concerned Mrs. Pryor this time. “Can I talk to Grace, please?”

I turn my back to Mr. Gray Diamond, not wanting to reveal anything about the mini-crisis I’m dealing with.

“Mom…”

“Grace, what happened? You can’t just run away like that.”

“Oliver made fun of me because we didn’t go to his birthday party.”

I shake my head. I didn’t know that sitting out a kidpoolparty would have these consequences.

“Told you we should’ve gone,” Grace laments.

Grace loves swimming, but she’s too young to understand. The only body of water that I dare to come close to is one that’s contained in a bathtub. Seeing or hearing water sloshing or streaming suffocates me, taking me back to the moment I almost died.

“Oliver said you were a snob.”

The boy is trouble, but at five, ‘snob’ is not a word they pluck from the ether. It’s learned, a mimicry of grown-up whispers.

“He’s talking bad about you,” Grace goes on. “I hate him! I hate everyone here.”

“Grace, you can’t say that. You don’t hate them, and you can’t just run away.”

“Well, we ran away from Seattle because you didn’t like Dad.”

Now, this is a matter I can’t blame my aquaphobia for. Thinking about my ex-husband makes my gut twist the way only he could. He was a narcissist who had a lust for money and grandiosity. Living beyond his means was second nature to him, and he was and probably still is in debt. Too many times, I was left to clean up his mess.

“Grace, honey, we talked about this.”

“I want to go home!”

“I’ll pick you up soon. In the meantime, you do as Mrs. Pryor says. Can you do that?”

“Okay…”

I pray to God her soft voice means she’s listening.

“I love you. I’ll see you soon.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

I blow kisses into my phone as I hang up.

Grace’s little rebellions are nothing new, often sparking within me the longing for a partner’s support—for Grace to have a father figure, and for me, a shoulder to rest on. Yet, when I close my eyes, the dream inevitably simplifies to just the two of us, where I am all that Grace has—mother and father both. Whether heaven or hell falls on me, I will defend her with my life.

Mr. Gray Diamond is still waiting for me in the corner. Much as I want to strike up a conversation and ask where the two handsome strangers come from, I have to go.

“Please, don’t report my dog,” the man begs. Maintaining a small distance, he carefully puts half of his wide-shouldered, tapered-waist frame in front of me, attempting to slow me down.

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