Page 43 of SEAL's Surprise Daughter

“Oh.” Hearing his name hit harder than I expected, which was silly. It was just a name, right? The name of the most wonderful man I’d ever known. Smart and funny and kind and considerate and sincere and honest and trustworthy and— I stopped that train of thought before it careened off the rails into forbidden territory. I shrugged and tried to sound nonchalant, even though I was aching inside from missing him. “He went into DC for the day, to visit a friend.”

Mom blinked at me a moment, then returned her attention to her crackers. The line between her brows was more defined now, meaning she was thinking about things. That usually meant trouble for me. She surprised me, though, by bringing up a friend of hers instead of getting on me about moving forward without the bar. “Remember my friend Gladys?”

“Sure.” Considering the population of Harpers Ferry was less than three hundred, and between the bar and being a lifelong resident here I knew just about everyone, it would be pretty hard for me to forget. “What about her?”

“She dyed her hair purple,” Mom said, then glanced up at me, eyes twinkling.

“Seriously?” I must have been busier than I thought the past few weeks to miss something like that. “Wow. That’s… interesting. Why?”

“I don’t know.” Mom shrugged. “She said she just wanted a change. She’s fifty-five, you know. Same as me.”

“Yeah.” Mom and Gladys had gone all through school together and been friends ever since. “Well, good for her,” I said and meant it. Change was good. Inevitable. Better to accept it than battle against it. I swallowed more coffee, glad for the scalding heat on my throat because it distracted me from the lump of sadness there. “How does it look?”

“Surprisingly good!” Mom grinned now, looking up at me. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about doing it myself. Maybe pink, though, instead of purple, because pink’s my favorite color. What do you think?” She patted her hair, the same sandy brown as mine, though hers was streaked with gray now. “I talked to my stylist about it, and she said the color takes pretty well to gray, so it would look like I have streaks of pink in my hair.”

I squinted and thought about it for a minute, then grinned myself. “I think you should go for it. You only live once, right? And if you don’t like it, you can cover it up or wait for it to grow out.”

We chatted for a while about nothing in particular—the weather, the goings-on in town, my latest phone call with the insurance company about how the amount they were offering wouldn’t even begin to cover the price tag to rebuild. Before my mom could respond to that last topic, though, Savannah started fussing in the living room, and I got up to tend to her.

By then it was about her lunchtime, so I scooped her up out of her walker and carried her into the kitchen with me to get her bottle ready. My mom was still standing at the island, getting the snacks and food ready for the other kids. She watched me as I fed Savannah, then finally took a deep breath and asked, “What’s going on?”

Frowning, I looked over at her, then back at Savannah, trying to dodge the question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s nice having you here today and all,” Mom said, giving me a look. “But we both know it’s not like you to just come over here and volunteer to help for no reason.”

Damn.

I exhaled slowly and forced my tense shoulders to relax. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Is it the bar?” she asked, not letting it go. “Because maybe this is a blessing in disguise, honey. I mean, I know you loved that place, for reasons I’ve never understood. But it was tying you down. Maybe not having the money to rebuild is a sign you should be doing something else.”

And there we went again.

Scowling, I set Savannah’s now-empty bottle aside, then put her over my shoulder to burp her as I turned to face my mother. “It’s not the bar,” I snapped, probably more harshly than necessary, but dammit, what was it about mothers making you feel like you were twelve years old again with one stupid question?

She raised a brow at me. “Well, if it’s not the tavern, then what is it? Because that bar has taken up all of your time for so long, and—”

Desperate not to go down that road again with her, not right now, I said the first thing that popped into my mind, which of course was, “Gabe. Okay?”

“Gabe?” she repeated, sounding surprised. “What about him?”

I took a deep breath and cradled the back of Savannah’s head with my hand, loving the silky feel of her hair under my fingers. She cuddled closer to me, melting my annoyance at my mother’s questions. Maybe I should talk to her about it. Lord knew she’d been through it with my father. Maybe she could put things in a different light for me. And really, what could it hurt at this point? I sighed and leaned my hips back against the edge of the counter. “He’s getting deployed again.”

“Oh.” Mom looked sort of blank about it, and that was unexpected. I figured she’d be upset, or perhaps supportive of me because of Savannah, but nope. She just acted like I’d told her he was going on vacation or something. “Where’s he going this time?” she asked, putting triangles of bologna sandwiches on colorful plastic plates for the toddlers, then adding a pile of crackers to each. “How long will he be gone?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my shoulders slumping as Savannah gave a loud burp, then fell asleep against me. “I didn’t ask.”

“Why not?” There was that line between Mom’s brows again, her expression concerned.

“I don’t want to know. I’m not involved in that.”

Mom’s gaze flicked to Savannah, then back to me, her brow arching higher. Yeah, she wasn’t buying that at all. “I’m pretty sure the judge would see that differently, since you’re her legal guardian and all.”

Crap. This conversation wasn’t going the way I’d intended at all. I shook my head, then stared down at the floor, digging my stockinged toe into the hardwood. “That’s just it, though, Mom. I’m her legal guardian. All that means is that while Savannah is little, she stays with me while Gabe’s away. But as she gets older, she can move to military bases close to him to be with her father when he’s not working. It’s all just temporary.”

“Doesn’t sound temporary to me.” Mom put away the lunch supplies, then got the toddlers set up at the table to eat before walking to the sink beside me to wash her hands. After drying them, she reached up to pat my cheek. “I love you, Charlotte. More than you’ll ever know. But, honey, it’s time for you to stop being afraid of being left behind.” I opened my mouth to argue, but she put a finger over my lips to stop me. “Or being afraid of leaving your comfort zone. Remember Dustin from high school?”

The guy I’d loved and lost because he’d gone away to England without me? Yeah, I remembered. And yes, he’d asked me to go with him, but I’d said no. I couldn’t leave Mom behind to fend for herself—and I wasn’t the one who’d gotten accepted to college there, anyway.

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