I’m tempted. Not an option. Any other suggestions?
Cole
Just one, runt. Quit waiting for the perfect time. There isn’t one. Tell her.
I took a deep breath. He was right. It was time to stop stuffing around.
But as my palm landed on the ice cream shop door, and I spotted Erin at the booth in the corner, I knew that time wasn’t now. Jeremy and Erin both laughed as Matilda spun one of her fantastical toddler tales about the ginger bear clutched tight in her tiny fist. Just like that box of critters Matilda loved to play with, they were a family, too. The last thing I wanted to admit to myself was that they wouldn’t get a divorce, but it was a possibility.
I shook my head and turned back, letting one of the old-timers stop me in a long conversation about “this rain we’re havin’” and “how’s your mother gettin’ on?” And what about “Cole, heard from him yet?”
And I didn’t mind.
I’d be waiting for Erin when she was ready. Outside now, to drive her home. Back at the cottage, maybe tonight, possibly in a month or two, when I dragged up enough courage to finally admit to her that I was in love with her.
15
That Stinging Rejection in Spring
Erin
Matilda was excited tointroduce her ginger bear to all the animals at the zoo.
“Princess.” Jeremy bent down. “I don’t think your little bear needs to meetallthe animals.”
Her eyebrows scrunched together. “He a pirate. He never see a lion. Matilda teach him!” She turned to her bear, her expression serious. “This one gorar!”
Jeremy sighed, and his dark eyes slid longingly toward the cafe. “I should’ve gotten another iced latte…” His two days in Tasmania were probably the longest he’d spent with her—or either of us, actually—in months. He wasn’t used to the endless toddler energy. “It’s unbearably hot for so far south…”
I resisted rolling my eyes. “I told you to bring a hat. You could grab one from the gift shop.” I nodded at Matilda. “You two could match.”
His lip curled. “I think one Easten walking about wearing a pink trucker cap like a yokel is more than enough.”
“Suit yourself.”
Side by side, Jeremy and I wandered behind Matilda as she marched around the zoo, her pink gumboots crunching along the gravel paths. She had so much confidence. She was certainly handling the separation better than I’d hoped. Not perfect, but for a toddler, she was handling it well.
Mostly.
There had been a few tears when we’d said goodbye to Jeremy after ice cream, and even the ghosts walking the halls of the Wolcott homestead would’ve been rattled by the tantrum she’d thrown at bath time.
She stood in the tub, her arms folded. “Daddy do bubbles!”
“Til,” I said, trying to calm her down, swishing the water around her legs. “The water’s so nice and warm—”
“No warm! Hate warm! Daddy do!”
My sniffled attempts to coax her to sit down failed, but Mim must have heard the wailing because her head popped around the door with a confused look.
“What’s all this hollerin’, eh?” she said.
Matilda stomped her foot, and a spray of water spat out of the tub. “No you, Mim! Daddy!”
“I reckon I might need to sit down here for a bit.” Mim lowered herself to the edge of the tub. “My old bones don’t like gettin’ up and down those stairs anymore.” She took one of the squeaky plastic books from the pile. “I might read one of these while I get my breath back, eh?”
Mim read the first one aloud with no reaction. By the second, Matilda waded closer and was listening to how the little fish in the book was brave enough to swim all by himself. Jeremy was forgotten after that. Matilda splashed happily in the bath andeven showed Mim how to duck her head underwater without getting scared.
Mim’s hand patted my knee. “You’re doin’ good,” she said. “She’s just testin’ the new limits.”
