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“No, you never told me that.” Coach is the most devoted father I’ve ever seen, not that I’ve had a ton of experience there. But plenty of the guys on my last team had families. I bet it broke his heart to not be there.
“I still don’t trust you or even like you,” he says after a long pause of studying me. “But I can respect that you’re trying to figure it out with her and not against her. It tells me you know Sadie comes first. Don’t prove me wrong, kid.”
* * *
Per Sadie’s request, we had a charcuterie plate for dinner. Because dead animals are fine, just so long as they aren’t cooked dead animals, she reminded me. I won’t even pretend to understand toddler logic. She ate mostly cheese and fruit, anyway. Only picking at the various pieces of meat.
A few times she asked Isla for permission for certain things, and every time Isla said that when she’s at Daddy’s house, she needs to ask me for permission. Sadie’s going with it, but I can’t help but wonder how confusing this all is for her, too. Overall, I think she likes it here. She finds every excuse she can to spend time in her bedroom, which tells me it’s past time she quit sharing one with her mom.
When Mom takes Sadie with her to wash up the dishes, I use the opportunity to talk to Isla.
“My attorney finally got back to me today.”
“Okay,” Isla says with a shrug.
“He came up with fifteen hundred a month for back child support. I think it’s a little low, so I was going to write you a check for a hundred grand. If that’s okay?”
“That’s too much, Cill,” she says. My heart skips a beat at the shortened name she hasn’t really called me in forever. “I don’t have a mortgage or a car payment. It’s too much.”
“Well, go buy a new car or get a mortgage with it.”
She rolls her eyes at me. Isla has never wanted to depend on or be a burden to anyone. If I stop and think about it, I know she would have protested more about my relationship with Trina if not for that personality trait of hers. Had she been in Boston with me and witnessed the things Trina did or said to me, Isla would have dragged her off by the hair and put her in her place. But because of the distance and knowing how I was struggling with adjusting, she probably internalized a lot about how she felt.
Feeling both guilty and jilted simultaneously is a damned trip.
“I’ll put it away for Sadie, for college or whatever,” she finally says, and I laugh.
“You will fucking not. I’ll be handling that shit. That’s my job, just like your dad did for you and Willa.”
“Cillian.”
“That’s not up for discussion. You do need to think about getting a place where she has her own room, though. You see how giddy she is over it?”
“I noticed, she’s pretty cute about it,” she says with the smile she always gets when Sadie’s doing something especially cute. Which is everything, always, but I may be biased. “I’ll move it up on the timeline. I should have done it a long time ago, but…”
“But you don’t like help from your dad and you’re just now starting to make money.”
“There’s more than that,” she says, worrying her lip.
“What else?”
“Mommy,” Sadie squeals as she runs back in from the kitchen, jumping into Isla’s lap. “Can you read me one story and then you leave my new bedroom and Daddy can come in my new bedroom and read me another story?”
“I think we can make that happen,” she answers, tickling Sadie’s side and making her laugh that infectious girly giggle that I fall a little more in love with each time I hear it.
It’s hard to understand how there are parents in the world that aren’t ridiculously infatuated with their children. Maybe Sadie Baby is smarter, cuter, and funnier than most kids. Maybe I’m besotted. And now, maybe I sound like one of those stuffy men in the period movies Isla was always watching. Does she still watch them? I do, when I want to remind myself of her. When I want to wallow in what I had and let slip away.
That’s a secret I’ll never admit. My teammates would never let me live it down that while they’re relaxing with Call of Duty, I’m watching shit like The Bridgerton’s with a bowl of popcorn sprinkled with Cajun seasoning. Just like I imagined she’d be doing.
Often, I thought she might be doing things that reminded her of me. Isla was always a bit of gamer, so sometimes it was that. But maybe she’d go watch her dad’s team practice and impart some wisdom to them. She might compare their form or their slapshots to mine. Her being so chummy with that Fane kid makes me think I wasn’t that far off. Isla always was most comfortable sitting at a rink.
“What was her first word,” I ask her when I come back downstairs from reading Sadie to sleep, my mom now long gone. Isla is curled up on the end of my oversized sofa, watching some reality show.
“Poop.”
“You’re joking,” I say, laughing.
“Nope. As much as I wanted it to be mama, or something along those lines, it was poop.”
