Page 73 of When the Storm Breaks
Not what I’d expected. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “What does that even mean?”
His lip ticked up at the corner. “It means that when you fall down, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and act like a man about it.”
“Kind of hard for a six-year-old girl to do.”
“Yeah, well, let’s just say I’m pretty damn happy I didn’t have a girl.” He shoved open his car door. “Be right back.”
I nodded and forced a smile. As soon as he was gone, I slumped in my seat and spun the sterling silver ring around my thumb. The ring was shaped like a feather, adjustable, and designed to fit on any finger. It had been on my mom’s hand when she died. Maw Maw had waited until my sixteenth birthday to give it to me. Maybe she knew she’d be gone before I reached my next birthday. Maw Maw told me the feather was the wing of an angel, a reminder that there would always be someone watching over me and I’d never really be alone. She’d told me that my mother had loved me and Landry more than life itself. Despite my mom’s unhappy marriage and a music career that had never taken off, we made her happy. I didn’t know if it was true, but it was what I’d chosen to believe. We were loved.
How I wished my mom could be here now, in the flesh, so I could ask her how to handle this situation.
This was exactly what I had thought I wanted, to spend time with my baby girl, but now that it was happening, I was tempted to run away and hide. Something I’d been doing all too often lately.
* * *
We ateoutside at a picnic table under a tree. My stomach was in knots and I couldn’t have eaten a taco if my life depended on it so when Brody asked what I wanted, I said water and made the excuse that I’d eaten a late lunch.
Hayley was sitting directly across from me, and the kids had just finished telling us everything they’d done for the day. Volleyball, archery, a nature hike, play practice for the drama production they were putting on at the end of the summer, and an art project they said was top secret.
“Can we have peach cobbler now?” Noah asked as soon as they’d finished their tacos.
He had sauce all over his mouth and half the toppings from his taco had fallen into the basket when he’d taken his first bite. Whereas Hayley had taken smaller bites and kept refolding her taco so she wouldn’t lose any of it.
“You both want cobbler?” Brody asked.
Hayley looked at Noah who nodded as if to reassure her it was okay to ask for what she wanted. “Yes, please.”
She’d been taught manners and was quick to say please and thank you.
Brody gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “You okay to watch them?”
I took a deep breath and let it out, my voice breezy so I wouldn’t let on that this was a big fucking deal. “Yeah. Sure. No problem.”
“Be right back.” Brody went inside to get their dessert, leaving me alone with the kids.
I tried not to stare at Hayley, but I couldn’t help myself. Today her brown hair was in a French braid, the fine baby hairs around her face curling from the humidity. Like Noah she was wearing shorts with a bright yellow T-shirt that said: Happy Trails Summer Camp.
“I like the drawings on your arm and your fingers,” Hayley said.
“Thank you.”
“They’re tattoos.” Noah explained to her, repeating the words I’d told him when he asked if he could do that to his own arm with a Sharpie. “Theynevergo away and never wash off.”
Hayley’s mouth formed a comical O that matched her wide eyes. “Not even if you scrub your skin with soap and water a million times?”
“Not even then,” I said.
“Wow. I don’t think my daddy would let me do that.”
I smiled. “I don’t think he would either. You’re a bit too young for tattoos.”
Her fingernails were painted with purple glitter nail polish and she was just so cute and so small that I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and breathe her in. But that would be too weird. To her, I was a total stranger so I couldn’t hug her or kiss her or tell her that she’d been the sweetest, most precious little baby in the world.
“Your nails look pretty,” I said, unable to come up with anything better. It was safe, at least, and not at all weird to compliment her nails.
She smiled, the dimples in her cheeks yet another reminder that she was Dean’s daughter. “Thank you. My mommy took me for a manicure. Purple is my favorite color.”
“It’s my favorite color too.”
