Page 72 of Whenever You Call

“Yep. I hear her all the time.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“I hate it. I just want her to be the old Mommy again. To be happy.”

“She’s trying, Bella. I promise.”

“I know.” Bella looked down at her bare feet, taking a moment before she looked back at me. “But I still don’t like hearing her cry.”

“Have you told her? That you hear her…”

“No, she’d be mad knowing I sneak over to her bedroom at night and listen. Sometimes I see her wiping her tears away in the kitchen before she turns around and smiles at me, but I can see the marks on her cheeks that made them go all puffy. I’m not as stupid as they think I am.”

“You’re definitely not stupid, Bella. Nobody thinks that.”

She paused and took a quick glance at the back of the house again. “I bet that’s what she’s doing now. Crying.”

I offered her a sad smile. “We don’t always cry because of sadness. Sometimes it’s frustration. Sometimes it’s happiness. There are lots of reasons.”

“Do you ever cry?”

Never. I trained myself not to many years ago, but I couldn’t exactly tell a kid that. “Everybody feels like crying at some point. But you know what? Whenever I feel sad, I try to block that sadness out by focusing on something good instead.”

“Like what?”

“Anything.” I shrugged. “Humans are messy creatures. We like to focus on everything sad instead of everything good. Sometimes we forget we’re in charge of our own brains, and if we really wanted to, we could turn things upside down until all the bad memories get replaced by the good.”

“I’ll try that next time. Maybe I could ask Mommy to try it, too.” Bella’s eyes drifted over my face, taking every inch of me in. “I like you, Mr. Logan.”

“I like you, too, Miss Bella.”

“Have you ever loved someone like that before? Like you’re happy you loved them, even though they’re gone now?”

I thought about my father and my best friend, both having left me with so much to say that I never got a chance to.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I have.”

“A girlfriend?” She smiled.

“Oh. No.” I shook my head. “Nothing like that.”

Her eyes drifted back to Hannah. “I don’t want Mom to be lonely forever.” She looked back at me, and I saw what she was suggesting there. I heard the undelivered message in her tone, and I hated that the kid asked the one thing of me I could never give. It only made my need to tell Hannah the truth that much more urgent.

I never wanted to be an illusion for either of them.

“I can promise you one thing, Bella: your mom will never be lonely.”

“Really?”

“How could she be? She’s got you.”

Her face lit up again like that had been the answer she’d needed to get through another day of seeing her mother upset.

“Bella?” Livia called from the back of the house, making us both turn to look at her. With a wave of her hand, she beckoned Bella to the house.

“Time to get that hair brushed, kid?” I asked her with a smile.

She huffed out an annoyed breath and rolled her eyes. “Not you as well. What’s wrong with my hair?” She didn’t give me time to answer before she turned and ran inside. When Livia’s eyes locked on mine just before she turned away, I saw the unspoken requestsheasked of me, too.

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