Page 52 of Love & Rockets

Darla jerked, startled into silence by her quiet child’s commanding bark. She blinked, then sat back, putting some distance between them before murmuring a wary, “Yes?”

“Are you sad?”

The question struck like a punch in the nose.

Darla fought the urge to cover her face as tears filled her eyes. But Gracie wasn’t a little girl anymore. She understood the dynamics between boys and girls as well as any teenager. Until that moment, Darla hadn’t thought. A lump lodged in her throat as she found herself wondering if her daughter had any first-hand experience with heartache. Had some boy trampled her tender feelings? Was it possible Grace knew exactly how it felt to be crushed by a crush and hadn’t felt she could to talk to her about it?

Something inside of her crumpled as the thought took hold. A tear broke over the edge of her lashes and streaked down her cheek before she could catch it. She lifted a hand to swipe it away, but at the last moment, curled her fingers into her palm. It was time to stop shielding Grace from her life and start letting her daughter witness some of the harder parts of being the grown up.

“Yeah, baby. I’m a little sad.” With a wobbly smile, she knuckled the rogue tear away before it could drop from her jaw. “But being sad is okay. I’ll be okay.”

“I think Dr. Jake’s sad, too.”

Darla smoothed Grace’s hair back from her forehead, appreciating her daughter’s tenacity nearly as much as her total lack of subtlety. “Sweets, you know Jake and I...” She stopped, completely stumped as to where the thought was supposed to go. “We were never a real thing. I mean, we like each other. We’re friends.”

“Are you?”

“Always,” Darla answered without hesitation, hoping one day, the fib might turn out to be the truth. “We’re friends, and we liked hanging out together, but we were never going to be….” Her heart slid up into her throat, choking off her words. “We have such different lives,” she finished in a whisper.

Grace’s forehead puckered. “Not that different. You both went to the same school. You know all the same people. You both think I’m the coolest girl in the world,” she added with a weak attempt at a smile.

“True. So true.” Darla ran her fingers down the curve of her baby’s peaches and cream cheek. “But I think you know it takes more to make a relationship work.”

“Is it because of my dad?”

“Your dad?”

Grace shrugged. “I know you say you’re okay with him not being around, but maybe you still have feelings—”

“Grace, baby, there are lots of really complicated reasons your dad and I never ended up together, but I promise you, I’m not carrying a torch for him.”

Her daughter’s face creased in consternation. “I never got that expression. It always makes me wonder if the Statue of Liberty is all wrecked over some guy.”

Darla laughed, tickled by the twists and turns her brilliant baby’s mind took. “My money’s on Michelangelo’s David. I hear all the girl statues are hot for him.”

“I’d pick The Thinker,” Grace said after a moment’s consideration.

Schooling her features into a puzzled frown, Darla gave her head a shake. “I’m shocked. You and the nerdy guy?” She pursed her lips. “I have to admit, I’ve always wanted to go to the Lincoln Memorial and climb into old Abe’s lap.”

“Ew!” Grace leaped up with an agility Darla envied. “That’s gross, Mom.”

“Not like that.” Darla chuckled at her daughter’s horrified expression. “I just think it would be cool. I’d sit there and Abe and I could talk and talk.” She grinned as Gracie rolled to her feet, tugging her pajama top down and sneering her disgust. “Four score and seven years? Really, Abe? You couldn’t say, ‘Hey, about eighty years ago, the guys who sketched this whole thing out—’”

“It’s eighty-seven years,” Grace corrected.

Darla grinned up at her as she retrieved the bowl from the floor. “Maybe you’d like to hang with my friend, Abe, too. Those knees of his are huge. I’m sure there’s room for both of us.”

“Goodnight, Mom,” Grace called over her shoulder as she scurried away.

Her smile faded when she heard the bedroom door click shut. Staring down at the neglected popcorn, she let her eyes drift shut as she drew a long, deep breath. Of all the men she’d known on any kind of intimate level, Gracie’s dad ranked somewhere near the bottom of the list of her emotional entanglements. But no woman wanted to tell her child she was the product of nothing more than a potent combination of stupidity and audacity.

Same as she wasn’t ready to admit to Gracie, or to anyone, but she might, just might, have a broken heart. Not until she could come up with even the first idea of how she might fix it.

****

“I need a brisket plate, two half-slab baskets, and a chicken dinner.” Zelda Jo tossed her empty tray onto the counter, narrowly missing the orders Darla was checking against her ticket. Without missing a beat, the older woman plucked plastic tumblers from the stack beside the drink fountain and began filling them with ice. “So you gonna tell me why John-John parked his tight little be-hind in my section and not yours, Daryl Hannah?”

Closing her eyes, Darla exhaled in a whoosh and tried to count to ten. She got as far as three before she snapped. “Don’t you have any magazines printed after nineteen-eighty-five? I mean, they’ve done two Charlie’s Angels reboots since you settled on that hairstyle. Maybe you should try for the Cameron Diaz look rather than whatshername Fawcett.”

---