Page 17 of Sunshine
I slide my hand up his arm and give his bicep a comforting squeeze. It’s different this time, with fabric between us. My thumping heart is muted, giving me the chance to appreciate the hard, carved ridges of muscle under his white cotton chef’s jacket. Those ridges coax my fingertips toward his broad shoulder, and I skim my palm upward. Dylan tenses under my touch, but this time, I don’t pull away. I’m too heartbroken for him. I need him to know I care.
“All parents feel that way sometimes,” I say. “Or at least, the good ones do. You’re doing a great job. Truly.”
Dylan places his hand on mine, and my stomach jumps into my throat before he removes it from his shoulder and, with a friendly squeeze, sets it on the table.
“I’ll get those schedules and to-do lists for Izzy,” he says as he gets to his feet. “I was going to pick up a few things today, including her new trumpet, but Charlie needs me here. If you don’t mind running a few errands, it’d really help me out.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” I reply, unsure if I’ve overstepped but smiling despite my insecurities. It’s not hard. I’ve had a lot of practice.
Dylan strides through the restaurant and heads turn as he passes. The set of his muscled back and the fall of his heavy boots tell the world that this is his domain, and he knows it, but when he returns with a binder of paperwork and worry lines etched across his face, I look at Dylan again. Really look. Not through the lens of a teenage crush or from the perspective of his sister’s best friend. Not even as a woman sitting across from one of the best-looking men to ever take a breath. I look at him as someone who has known him all his life and compare the personhe was ten years ago to the man he is today—older and wiser with the weight of a little girl’s world on his solid shoulders.
Daisy is right. Dylan has too many burdens. He needs fun in his life, and maybe dating is the answer, no matter how much I wish it weren’t.
And maybe he just needs someone to remind him of the guy he once was—and show him the man he still could be.
six
Poppy
Some things never change,including the school that was mine twenty-odd years ago. I turn into the parking lot of Aster Springs Elementary, pull my car into an empty space, and cut the engine. It’s weird to be here again after so long, and memories hang thick in the cool January air. I wasn’t a great student as a kid and rarely well-behaved, and the combination made me a pain in the ass for every teacher I ever had, but time has made me wonder how much of that was my fault. I squint at the brown-brick buildings as a weird sensation of missed opportunity settles over me. What might my life look like today if someone had noticed way back then that learning was harder for me than it was for nearly everyone else?
According to Dylan’s notes, Izzy’s class exits on the west side of the school. As promised, I’m here fifteen minutes before dismissal to make sure I’m up close where she can see me, leaning against the side of my car and monitoring the closed school gate with an uncommon level of concentration. Izzy might know to look for me instead of her Uncle Finn today, but I don’t want there to be a mix-up or a moment of panic or anyother reason that might make Dylan cancel this whole nanny arrangement.
Just a couple of minutes after the dismissal bell, Izzy appears at the gate. Her thumbs are stuck behind the straps of her pink backpack, her puffy parka making her look like a giant marshmallow with legs, and her dark head turning as she stretches up on her toes to search the crowd of faces for mine.
“Izzy!” I wave an arm over my head and hurry over to her. “I’m here!”
“Poppy!” Her face lights up as she picks up speed, and we meet each other as kids and parents move around us. Her dark brown eyes are bright until she notes my empty hands, and her face falls. “Do you have my trumpet?”
“Yep. It’s in the car.” I take her bag from her back and swing it over my shoulder. “Your dad gave me a monster list of things to do today, and I spent hours getting you all set for music and ballet and soccer and Spanish and ceramics. Your trumpet is in my trunk.”
She pumps her little arm and makes a fist. “Yes!”
“We have to hurry to make it to your first lesson, so let’s get moving.”
“Okay. Oh.” Izzy turns around to wave at a little blonde girl as she passes us with her mother. “Bye, Mellie!”
The other girl glances at Izzy, ignores her friendly farewell, and keeps on walking.
Izzy’s chin drops and her shoulders sag, and I watch the other kid disappear into the crowd, knowing it’s wrong to dislike a child but unable to help myself given the disappointed look on Izzy’s face. And this isn’t my first rodeo. I recognize schoolyard drama when I see it.
“Is she a friend of yours?” I ask.
Izzy shakes her head with downcast eyes. “No.”
It takes superhuman control not to ask for more information—and thereismore information, I’m sure of it—but outside the school gates with teachers and parents and students everywhere, isn’t the time for a deep and meaningful conversation with a six-year-old girl who, let’s face it, might not know if she can trust me with big feelings yet.
“Let’s go,” I say instead. “I bet you can’t wait to get your hands on your trumpet.”
Izzy’s easily distracted, and by the time I help her into her booster seat, double-check her seat belt, and navigate my way out of the busy parking lot, she’s talking a mile a minute about her new music lessons.
“Why did you choose the trumpet?” I ask as we arrive at the local community college where Izzy’s after-school music tutoring program is held. I follow the signs to the correct department, then pull into an empty space. “Don’t most kids your age learn the piano or guitar or clarinet?”
I glance at her in the rear-view mirror, rolling my lips to stop a smile as her button nose wrinkles with distaste. “Why would I want to be like most kids?”
“You’re my kind of girl, Isobel Davenport.”
Once we’re out of the car, I root around in the trunk for the hard leather case that holds her instrument as well as a music theory textbook, sheet music, and a few other odds and ends the guy at the store said she had to have. The case isn’t particularly heavy, but it’s almost as big as Izzy, and she puffs out her chest as she hoists it up by the handle. The case bangs against her legs as she walks, her body leaning to one side to account for the weight on the other, and I resist the urge to smile as I close the trunk and lock the car.
