“What are you thinking about, Mum?” Lily slides out of my hold and settles on the bed beside me.
“About when you were born.”
She makes a disgruntled face like only an eight year-old would and sighs. “You’re weird.”
I smile and give her a nudge. “And you wonder where you get it from, huh?”
She chuckles and leaves the room, her light and airy voice carrying through the house as she calls out to my mother.
Her father’s never seen her. He doesn’t know she has the same wicked smile, or that she tucks one leg under her and taps her finger on her knee like he did when she thinks. He’s got no idea that his baby girl is going to be trouble for the boys when she’s older, that his baby girl is the most beautiful creature ever created—rose-tinted mum glasses aside.
Lily is stunning—inside and out. Which is more than I can say for him.
After all, handsome as he was, what does any of that matter when a man abandons his partner and newborn child to fly overseas and start again … alone?