Page 15 of The One I Want
“Are you sure you’re not in your thirties? Because you sound more put together than I am.”
She shrugs. “It’s an older sister thing. Comes with the territory.”
I have known this girl for five minutes, and I want her to be my life coach.
I’m about to ask her how I can get my life together when I see a pair of headlights turning into the driveway.
“Daddy!” Magnolia yells, dropping the ball and racing toward the SUV. I can’t help but panic as she takes off to the driveway. Luckily, she stops at the edge of the grass and waits not so patiently for Wes to get out of the car and wrap her in a hug.
“She missed him,” Emerson says as she stands up. “She asked Gram if Dad was leaving forever too.”
I feel my heart break as Emerson walks over to her dad, where Hank has now latched on to Wes’s leg. It’s now the worst-kept secret in Rolling Hills that Wes’s wife left him and the kids. I don’t know her, but fuck her. I’m not a mother, but how could she do that? How could anyone? I’ve known these kids for literally forty-two seconds, and I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to them tonight.
I stand up from my seat on the porch as Wes and the kids walk toward me.
“Daddy! Look who’s here!”
“I see,” Wes says. “Nice to see you, Betsy.”
“Hi there,” I say, suddenly feeling like an intruder. “I was just hanging out with the kids. I hope that’s okay.”
“She was playing catch with us!” Hank chimes in. “She wasn’t very good.”
“Hank,” Wes says, just firm enough to know he means business. “Was that very nice?”
His face drops. “I’m sorry, Miss Betsy.”
I crouch down so I’m eye level with him. “Thank you, but you were right. I wasn’t very good. I’ll keep practicing, though. That way next time you won’t have to chase the ball as much.”
“You’ll play with us again?”
“Absolutely! Next time you’re over at your grandma’s, you just come knock on my door.”
Hank looks up at his dad. “Did you hear that, Dad? Miss Betsy wants to play with us!”
He smiles and gives Hank a quick mussing of his light brown hair. “I did. That’s pretty cool. How about you guys go inside and start getting your stuff so we can get home?”
The three groan for a second before Emerson takes charge and starts herding them in the house.
“You don’t have to do that,” Wes says.
“I don’t have to do what?”
“Hang out with them. Play. If it’s not your thing, you can tell them no.”
“What if I want to?”
He tilts his head, as if we aren’t on the same wavelength. “You really want to play catch in the dark, which will one day lead to tag in the dark, and hide and seek in the dark, and anything else they can think of to play in the dark? I can understand if that’s not your thing.”
“Why wouldn’t it be my thing?”
“Is it your thing?”
“We’ve said ‘thing’ a lot in the last ten seconds.”
“Yes, we have.”
We stare at each other for a second. I don’t think either of us know what we were talking about.
