Page 28 of The Summer House

“Nervous.”

He lowered his voice. “What did Daisy mean back there when she said you’d been approved for foster care?”

Mandy leaned toward him and spoke softly. In the back seat Eva was singing along with a song about happy frogs.

“I’ve been approved to be a foster parent. That’s the first step in anything permanent. Eva would come stay with me as a foster child and we would see how things go.” She leaned back in her seat. “Now I have to get real about this. It’s no longer in the abstract.”

“Scary?”

She looked at him and nodded. “More than you know. I want to do the right thing for both of us. I worry about having the right resources.”

“You wouldn’t have to worry about money. Your dad would see to that.”

“I’m all grown up. Isn’t it time to stop expecting him to bail me out?”

“This is different.”

“Maybe. There are other considerations. It’s a huge, lifetime commitment. I want to do things right. I want to be sure. Actually, I want us both to be sure.”

Rick glanced in his rearview mirror. Eva beamed as she sang. Every couple of seconds she looked at Mandy. Her whole face lit up with delight. Mandy might need to be sure, but it seemed that Eva had already made up her mind.

“I can see the responsibility would be a little daunting,” he said.

“That’s part of it.”

He tried to imagine what he would do in her situation. Mandy’s affection for Eva came from knowing the child. He didn’t have much contact with kids. He frowned. Actually he didn’t have any.

The thought came from nowhere that if he and Mandy had stayed together, they would have several children by now. Well, at least a couple.

What would that have been like? He wanted to think that they would have been good parents, but he wasn’t sure. They’d both needed to grow up. Things would be different now. Not that they were talking about kids, or anything but getting closure on their divorce.

He looked at Eva again. She caught his gaze in the mirror and gave him a shy smile. He smiled back. Next to him Mandy hummed along with the song. Her nerves had faded and she seemed happy, as well. All in all, it was turning out to be a good day.

* * *

“Look!” Rick said, pointing overhead.

Eva obligingly craned her neck, then gasped, took a step back and nearly toppled over. Rick caught her with a steadying hand on her waist.

“It’s a whale,” he said. “A blue whale. They’re the biggest creatures on the planet.”

Eva looked from the full-scale model to him and back. “Where?” she asked.

“In the water.”

She glanced at the aquarium tanks around them and looked doubtful.

“Not here,” he said. “Out in the ocean. There’s a chart over there. I’ll show you.”

He held out his hand and Eva took it with a trust that brought a lump to Mandy’s throat. Somehow on the short walk from the car to the entrance to the Aquarium of the Pacific, Rick had managed to charm the shy eight-year-old. Now he led her to the display that detailed where blue whales lived.

Two hours later, Mandy found herself as charmed as Eva. They’d toured the first level of the display before moving upstairs to the second level. Over snacks in the Café Scuba, Rick kept them both laughing with stories about his various scuba-diving adventures.

“You swim under the water?” Eva asked, obviously impressed by such an impossible feat.

“With help,” he said. “Can you swim?”

Eva sipped on her covered cup of milk and shrugged. “Daisy takes us to the pool, but I don’t swim. I have water wings,” she added. “Sometimes I kick my feet.”

---