Page 50 of Just a Heartbeat Away

Sadie and Via both threw their heads back and laughed. Hard. The image of huge, barrel-chested Sebastian making fruit pancakes and dancing to Prince with his son was too much for Via. She got that strange door open/closed feeling again, and it had her catching her breath.

“So he’s pretty sick, huh?” Via asked, ignoring the tight feeling inside of her.

“Yup.” Matty dipped the toe of his sneaker into a shoe print that had been pressed into the wet concrete decades ago. “I got him sick. But he says it’s okay because it was an accident. And that dads understand that sometimes they get sick when their boys get sick.”

Sadie made a little gasping noise and pressed her hand to her heart. Via understood perfectly.

“He should be better in no time,” Sadie reassured Matty. “He only had to miss a few days.”

“That’s true,” Matty said thoughtfully. “But it’s not quite fair because when I got sick, I only had to miss school, but he had to miss fun stuff.”

“Like what?” Sadie asked.

“Well, he had to miss nachos day in the cafeteria today, which is his favorite. And also he had to cancel two dates.”

Via missed a step when her toe caught on a crack in the sidewalk, but Sadie didn’t even notice. The redhead’s eyes were narrowed in on Matty’s face, an insane light in her eyes. She was finally getting a little Fabulous Mr. Dorner gossip, and she apparently didn’t give a rat’s ass about the integrity of the source.

“Your dad goes on dates?” Sadie asked innocently, shamelessly.

“Sadie!” Via hissed. It was so inappropriate to ask Matty this that she felt heat all the way to the roots of her hair.

Matty didn’t seem to notice or understand the impropriety of the question. The six-year-old played with the toggle on his backpack strap and nodded fervently, almost viciously. “Yeah. Moms and dads can go on dates!” His face was knit with both certainty and confusion. Via got the distinct impression that he’d had this same argument with a classmate. “Well, I don’t really know about moms. But dads can. My dad goes on dates all the time.”

Sadie inhaled, swallowing wrong in her excitement and coughing out her next words. “Really? He tells you about it?”

Matty nodded, like the answer was so obvious he was surprised he even had to explain it. “He always tells me where he’s going and who he’s going to be with. He says it’s fair because I have to do that for him. But he goes on dates with ladies, and I go on playdates.”

“Ladies?” Sadie asked, prying for more Mr. Dorner gossip. “Like lots of different women?”

Via was mortified, utterly mortified. They were prying into this man’s private life. And for nothing more than gossip.

“Sadie,” she murmured. She was going to take the first opportunity that they were alone to make sure Sadie knew that none of this could be shared with a single other soul.

But apparently Matty didn’t care. “Yeah. Lots. But he says he hasn’t met his match.” Matty kicked a stone down the sidewalk in front of them and the movement had him tugging down on Via’s hand. Sadie didn’t even have to fish for more information; the kid was on a roll. “Daddy says that a lady can’t be a match for him if she doesn’t want to be a mommy. But that I shouldn’t hope too much because that’s really hard to find.” Matty squinted up at the two women walking him home. “But I don’t get it because there are tons of mommies. So I don’t understand why he can’t find one.”

Sadie’s expression instantly became chagrined. She’d been pushing in a fun way, but it was so clear that this wasn’t a silly, salacious matter. This was Sebastian’s life. Matty’s life. This was a man who was trying to tread carefully enough that his son wouldn’t get caught in the crosshairs.

“Well, you know,” Via started. She was gonna give this her best shot. And then she was going to tell Sebastian everything, so that he could decide if more explanation was warranted. She owed him that. This wasn’t a game. The man was a parent. And Matty was a person with feelings. “Finding the right person isn’t easy. Because people meet each other all the time, but they don’t always fall in love. Falling in love is a little bit magic. And you know how rare magic is.”

“What do you mean, it’s magic? Magic like Serafine’s magic?”

Via weighed her head side to side. “Maybe. Honestly, I don’t know. It’s still a little bit of a mystery to me. But I guess what I’m saying is that the best thing you can do is just be happy you have a daddy who loves you so much that he wants to find the perfect person to fit in with your lives.”

“Okay,” Matty said, his eyes squinting across the street at a lady walking her poodle. He’d reached capacity for adult conversation. “You think that dog is Crabby’s mom? Because Crabby is half poodle, but we didn’t know who his parents were ’cuz we never met them.”

“Could be.” Via gave his sweaty little hand a squeeze.

“Who is Crabby?” Sadie asked, putting enough attitude in her question that Matty laughed.

“My dog!” Matty let go of Via’s hand and sprinted up the last half a block, apparently very excited to get home.

He was banging on the front door and bouncing on his heels when Via and Sadie caught up. The two women stayed down on the sidewalk as they looked up to the front porch.

The locks slid and the door swung open to reveal a very tousled, very pale Sebastian yanking a T-shirt into place.

“Dad!” Matty lunged forward and hugged Sebastian around one thigh before he dropped to his knees and let himself get completely tackled by Crabby. The ecstatic dog trounced the kid, covering him all over in licks and face rubs. Sebastian weakly smiled at the boy’s wild yelps of delight and sagged against the doorjamb as he looked down at the two ladies.

“Hi.”

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