Page 23 of Deal Breaker
The sound of it cracks something open in me.
Iamhere and I won’t run this time.
“Landyn?”My mom’s voice calls from the hallway, followed by the familiar sound of the faint jingling of her keychain. She pokes her head into the kitchen, a glass mason jar in her hand. “Just dropping off soup I made today.Thought I’d check in and see how your first real week’s going.”
I flip the card shut from Ford closed too fast, shoving it under the stack of mail on the kitchen table.
Her eyes land on the package. “What’s that?”
“Just…something from an old friend,” I say, hating how my voice wobbles.
She gives me a knowing look. “Friend, huh?”
I don’t respond because what am I supposed to say? That the man whose heart I broke had somehow found the exact crack in the armor I’d been building for the past seven years? That he remembers me better than I remember myself? And that I hate how good it feels to be remembered?
“Mom, it’s nothing. It’s no big deal,” I mutter, bringing P’s dinner dish to the sink to distract myself.
She doesn’t let it go. “I don’t know, Landyn. You’ve been awfully tight-lipped about things lately. Since when do you hide things from me?”
“Fine, it’s from Ford, but I really don’t want to talk about it right now. I want to talk about you and what you’re doing here this late when you should be on the couch with your feet up.”
“I’m fine, Landyn. You don’t need to worry about me. Besides, your dad drove me here, he’s waiting outside,” she says, putting the soup in my fridge. “Make sure P knows it’s here—it’s chicken noodle, her favorite.”
“Thanks, Mom. I love you,” I say wrapping her in a tight hug. “I should get Poppy ready for bed.”
“Okay, go on. But just remember, I’m here when you’re ready to talk. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She smiles, tossing one last look at the package on the table before heading to the door.
I sit on the edge of Poppy’s twin bed, running a brush gently through her damp, honey-brown curls. She’s in her favorite pajamas, the ones covered in tiny golden retrievers wearing tiaras. She yawns dramatically every few seconds like she deserves a medal for surviving a day of grade one.
“You’re going to pull my hair out,” she mumbles, her voice heavy with sleep.
I smile, brushing slower. “You have about four strands tangled. You’ll live.”
She tilts her head to look up at me, those wide gray eyes blinking. “Mommy?”
“Yeah, bug?”
“Can we get a dog? Like, a real one? One that sleeps in my bed and eats pancakes?”
I laugh softly, pulling the brush through the last section of her hair. “Why would it eat pancakes?”
“Because its name is gonna be Pancake.” She sounds exasperated that I even have to ask. “Duh.”
I press a kiss to the top of her head, heart tugging hard. “We’ll see, okay? Maybe after we get settled.”
She frowns. “We already are.”
I pause. “I know. I just mean… more settled.”
She scrunches her nose at me but seems too tired for any more questions. Instead, she wriggles under the blankets, pulling her stuffed bunny tight against her chest, and I smooth my hand over her curls again.
“You know,” I whisper, more to myself than to her, “when you were born, you had this little wrinkle between your eyebrows. Just like now, when you’re tired. You looked so serious for such a tiny baby.”
She grins sleepily. “I was thinking about important things.”
I laugh, blinking back the burn behind my eyes. “I bet you were.”
My mind drifts, uninvited, to when I lived in Alberta at my aunt’s. Poppy was a newborn, and we shared a bedroom with barely enough room for her crib. I was terrified. But then I would look at her little face and everything else just fell away. She looked just like him. Still does. Same sharp jaw, same fierce eyes. The same stubbornness that lives in her bones.
