“O…kay.”
Grinning, I whipped out the last box. “Chocolate cake!”
Every dollar of that overpriced lump of flour and frosting and the twenty minutes standing in line at the bakery in the city was worth seeing the brief smile that spread across Erin’s face. Sharing a piece of chocolate cake and staying up late, talking on her back veranda, had solved a lot of our problems growing up.
Matilda squealed. “Please!” Her tiny hands flapped. “Please!”
“You can have a piece of cakeafterdinner, okay?” Erin told her in a gentle but firm voice. “You already had a cupcake at the doctor’s today.”
I tried to play dumb. “Oh, you went to the doctor today?” The worry squeezing my chest pitched my voice embarrassingly high. “How’d that go?”
“It went, um… It went…” Erin ducked her head, the cuff of her cardigan scrubbing furiously at her eyes. “Shit.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Shit.”
Matilda’s bottom lip quivered. She wouldn’t have been used to seeing her mum fall apart. Erin had always been the type to hold back for everyone else’s sake. I kept a steady hand on her back, and my mind raced to figure out how to take care of this… somehow…
“Hey, Til.” I did my best to keep my voice bright. “Can you take your new crayons and paper and draw your mum the biggest, bestest picture of a pirate?”
Matilda bounced up and down. “Yeah!”
“Make it a surprise, okay? Can you do it in your room?”
Nodding, she arched on her tiptoes and slipped the crayons and paper off the table. Tiny footsteps scampered away.
“S-sorry,” Erin stammered. “It’s just—it’s been such a big day and, um—” She tore a paper towel off the roll and scrubbed it over her eyes.
“Ez… Come here…”
I wrapped my arms around her and sheltered her under my chin. Did she still spritz her hair with rose perfume like she had when we were teenagers? She sure smelled cozy. My resistance fought the urge to do more. It was a constant battle, desperately wanting to steal a kiss—a gentle way to show her I cared—and the fear of her pushing me away. Kisses were reserved for lovers…and cheating husbands.
“You don’t need to keep putting on a brave face,” I whispered into her hair.
“I do. Til’s so little, Cal. She can’t see me like this.”
“You’re teaching her it’s okay to feel upset if someone hurts you.”
“It’s herdad.”
“And he’s the one who should’ve been worried about protecting her by not stepping out on his marriage. That’s not your fault.”
“Til doesn’t understand that. God, neither doeshe. He’s making me feel like I’ve lost my mind. Here.” Erin untangled from my arms and grabbed her phone off the kitchen counter. “Look at the message he sent me!”
She shoved the screen under my nose.
Jeremy
Will you be home by Wednesday? I want to take both of my girls out for manicures and milkshakes.
I grimaced.
“Right?” Erin threw her hands up in frustration. “Jeremy’s so oblivious! He’s acting as if I stopped by a friend’s house for a coffee and everything’s going to be fine.” She barked a humorlesslaugh. “Well, it’snotfine. I want this sham of a marriage to be over! I want my lawyer to destroy him! I want to snap his tennis racquet in half and bleed every dollar out of him because that’s all he cares about. He sure as hell doesn’t…” Her palm planted on the counter as she sucked in gulps of air. “He doesn’t…” Her breath turned ragged. “He doesn’t love me at all.”
I clasped both of my hands on her shoulders and looked her dead in the eye. “His loss. You hear me?Hisbloody loss, Ez. Jeremy showed you his true colors, and you haveeveryright to be upset.”
“What did she have that I didn’t? What did she do? I triedsohard. He said I… I wasn’t…”
Erin shook her head furiously from side to side. She choked back her words with a sob and barreled into me, her arms slinging around my back. Tears soaked through my shirt. This was agony. I kept a steady hand on her back to stop my fingernails from biting into a fist. Jeremy was nothing but a low-down, no-good, cheating son of a—
“Mummy?”
