Page 87 of Worth the Risk

“Yay.” She throws her hands up in the air and runs out of the room, her black curly locks flowing behind her.

After getting out of bed, I take a quick shower, put on my suit and cover-up, and head downstairs to the kitchen.

Riley is sitting on her chair at the table with Mom and Manda, eating pancakes. Well, she’s mostly wearing syrup on her face, but a messy child is a happy child, Manda always says. And from her appearance, she is incredibly happy.

I chuckle while grabbing some pancakes and taking them to the table. Sitting down, I pour myself some orange juice and dig into my breakfast.

“Sweetheart, I have a surprise for you,” Mom says to Riley.

“What is it, Grandma?” she asks, already excited and clapping her hands.

“I bought you some new buckets and shovels for the sand. I put them by the door so you won’t forget them.”

Jumping out of her seat, Riley starts to run to the living room, and she’s fast, but I’m quicker. I catch her around her waist and pick her up, careful not to let her sticky fingers and face near my hair. I learned that lesson the hard way, unfortunately.

Carrying her to the sink, I sit her on the counter before wetting a washcloth and wiping her face and hands.

“Mommy, I want my buckets,” she complains, squirming to get down.

After cleaning her up, I place her on the floor, and she flies out of the kitchen, returning moments later with her new buckets. She gives Mom a big hug. “Thank you, Grandma.”

She releases Mom and runs up to me. “Let’s go, Mommy. I want to play with my buckets.”

“Okay, sweetie. Let me get my stuff and pack a small cooler. Then we will go.”

After we pack up, we head to the lake.

* * *

We’ve been at the lake for about two hours. The water is still a bit cold as summer has just begun, so Riley is mostly making castles. We’re joined by Grace, a woman I met last year when she bought a vacation home here. Her hair is in a short blonde bob style. She came here one day, we struck up conversation, and whenever we’re both here, we sit together, which is often. Sometimes Becca and her adorable little boy join us as well.

I think Grace is lonely. She told me she lost her husband years ago. She rarely speaks of him, but when she does, it is fondly. Maybe we felt a bond over losing someone we loved because we clicked right away. She lost her husband to death, and I lost Leo to a manipulative bitch.

“She really is the most precious child,” Grace says about Riley.

Yes, she is.She has Leo’s black hair and bright blue eyes. The waves in her hair and her nose are from me, but otherwise, she’s all Leo. No one could deny who her father is. The day I delivered her, she had so much dark hair, and when I gazed adoringly at her cute little face, I saw a tiny version of him. Even though I already knew she was Leo’s daughter, we had a DNA test done with Nash. Neither of us thought we slept together that night, but I didn’t want one shred of question as to who her father is. Nash and I have stayed in contact over the years, and he occasionally visits us.

I’ve not heard a word from Leo in all this time. He made no attempt to be in Riley’s life. He doesn’t even know she’s named after him. She has his middle and last name. Riley Nora Knight was born on April first, my little April Fool’s baby. My labor began the day before. Like the idiot I am, I searched Leo online. I had been good about not doing it until that point, but that day, my curiosity got the better of me.

From what I saw, Leo was not lonely or missing me. There were countless photographs of him leaving different bars with different women. He was living up to his prior wild-boy ways while I sat around the house, waiting to bring Riley into the world.

It should not have surprised me, but it did. I guess a small part of me hoped he would be thinking about me, but clearly, he wasn’t. He was back to his fuck-boy ways.

That hurt, and to this day, I believe the emotional stress brought on my labor. I vowed never to search him again, and I’ve kept that promise to myself. Some days, it is hard to look at Riley and not think about him.I know I lost my one.

Riley has asked about him, and she knows he exists. The first time she asked where her daddy was, I was caught off guard. Riley saw some other girls had daddies in preschool, so I should have anticipated the question. Thinking quickly, I told her he was at work. Not my best moment, but it was all I had. She now asks me when he will be home from work. Sadly, I lie and say he has an especially important job, but he loves her and will see her when he’s able to.

I’ll have to fess up one day, but I don’t look forward to that conversation. I’ve given her false hope. Or maybe it’s me who hopes that one day he will get his head out of his ass and want her.

Deep down, I acknowledge that if he hasn’t cared in all these years, he never will.

Riley has a picture of him on her nightstand. Well, of us. It was a selfie we took together one day by Leo’s pool. She wanted to see him, and when I showed her the picture, she wanted to keep it. I had it printed and framed and put it in her room, along with others of me, Manda, Mom, and Auntie Sierra.

Riley may not have Leo’s love, but she has the love of the rest of us.

After taking a year off from school, I went back and got my teaching degree, and now I work at a local elementary school and teach fourth grade. I have my summers off with Riley, Manda babysits her while I work, and Mom spends as much time with her as she can.

Sierra works as a social worker in an outreach program in New York, but she often comes down to see us and Uncle Tony and Mark. Today is the first day of summer vacation since school is out.

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