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“A hitch?”
She lifts her ice cream. “You never allow ice cream before dinner.”
She makes me out as a hard ass parent. She thinks I’m a hard ass? She should meet my parents. Talk about hard asses. My rules are a joke compared to theirs.
I couldn’t go out during the school week except for school activities. I wasn’t allowed to phone friends during the week. I couldn’t have an afternoon snack unless I finished my homework first. And the lecture if I didn’t get good grades? I shiver at the memory.
But Isla will never meet her grandparents because they refuse to acknowledge her existence. My heart aches at the reminder of how easily my parents threw us away.
I rub a hand over my chest and force those memories into the box I built especially for them. Just to be certain I put a padlock on the box as well.
“I want to discuss Fender.”
Her bottom lip wobbles and I nearly cave. But I can’t. I’m a parent. I have to do the hard things because if I don’t, no one else will.
“There’s no reason to be upset.”
“He doesn’t like me,” she whines.
“Fender likes you.”
“He ran out of the house.”
Thanks for the reminder, kid. “He wasn’t running from you. He was running from me.”
Her little nose wrinkles. “Huh?”
“Here’s the thing. You and me?” I motion between the two of us. “We’re a unit. We’re a family.”
“Yeah, you’re my mom.”
“But people don’t treat us as a family. They treat us as two individual people. Do you understand?”
“Yeah?”
I try again. “What I mean is that you have one relationship with Fender and I have a different relationship with him.”
“Okaaay.”
“My relationship with Fender doesn’t affect yours.”
Her brow wrinkles. “I’m confused.”
Probably because I’m doing a crappy job of explaining myself. I inhale a deep breath and try again.
“What I’m trying to say is that your relationship with Fender isn’t the same as mine.”
“Duh.”
“Smart alec,” I mutter. “He’s mad at me, not at you.”
“But he got mad about something I said.”
“Forget I said mad. He’s upset with me because what you said reminded him of something.”
“Reminded him of what?”
I don’t even have a shovel and I dug myself a hole deep enough to be a ditch to bury myself in.
