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Her eyes widen again. “Do I have to go away?”
“What? No! You don’t have to go anywhere.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. It’s not like that. I’m just saying, you know, sometimes parents don’t live together, and that’s okay, and it doesn’t make them any less of a family. Everyone has a mom and a dad.”
She shakes her head. “Not everyone.”
“Yes, sweetheart. Everyone.”
“Nuh-uh, Noah at my school doesn’t got a dad. He’s got two moms!”
“Oh, well… okay, but still, that’s what I mean. Everyone has two parents.”
“But Jenny doesn’t got two now. She’s got three, ‘cuz her dad got married, so she has another different kinda mommy, right?”
“Right.” Man, I’m screwing this all up. “But she still has her dad, too, so what I’m saying is—”
“I’m your dad.”
Jonathan’s voice is quiet as he cuts in, but it still packs enough of a punch to make me inhale sharply.
Maddie looks at him. “You wanna be my dad?”
“I do,” he says. “I already am.”
Her mouth falls open in shock. “Did you get married to Mommy?”
He blinks rapidly, caught off guard, while I choke on thin air, coughing at that question.
“Oh, no, we didn’t…” His eyes cut my way before he continues. “It’s not like that. I’ve always been your dad.”
“How?”
“How?” he repeats. “Well, I just am. Your mother, she’s your mom, and I’m your dad.”
“But how?” she asks again.
He looks to me for help, like he’s not sure what she’s even asking, so I chime in again before he takes that how literal and starts spilling about the birds and the bees.
“Moms and Dads aren’t always together, remember? So he’s still your dad even if he wasn’t around.”
“But where was he at?”
She’s asking me, not him. I know it’s because she trusts me implicitly, and as much as she adores what she believes he is, she doesn’t yet know Jonathan. But I don’t know how to answer that, or if I even should. I don’t know if I should be the one to explain his absence, to make his excuses.
“I wasn’t where I should’ve been,” he chimes in. “I should’ve been with you, but I was…”
“Sick,” I say when he struggles for words.
“Sick,” he says.
“Did you have the tummy bug?” she asks, looking at him.
“No, it was worse than that,” he admits, “and I’m to blame, nobody else. I made some really bad choices. I—”
“Did you disappear?” she asks.
“I messed up,” he says. “I know I haven’t been here for you, but I want to be here now, if you’ll let me.”
She sits in silence for a moment, thinking that over, before shrugging. “Okay.”
He looks stunned. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she says again, standing up from the couch as she grabs his hand to pull him along with her again. “But you have to sleep in Mommy’s bed, ‘cuz mine can’t fit you.”
“Uh…” He laughs awkwardly as he follows her. “What?”
“He’s not going to live with us,” I say. “Remember Jenny’s parents?”
She nods, looking at me. “But can he play now, Mommy? Please?”
“Of course,” I say, giving her a smile. “He can stay and play as long as he wants.”
She drags him away before I say anything else.
I faintly hear her rambling about something from her bedroom as I try to busy myself again to keep from fixating on his presence. I clean some more. I listen to music. I watch a bit of television.
Hours pass.
Long, long hours, some of the longest hours of my life. I don’t know what they’re doing, not wanting to interrupt, but I can hear Maddie laughing, and I can hear him talking, the two of them playing.
It’s near dusk and I’m in the kitchen, cooking dinner, when things grow quiet. I hear footsteps behind me, restrained on the wooden floor, heading my direction.
Jonathan pauses right inside the doorway. “She fell asleep.”
“Not surprised,” I say. “She’s been wide open all day long.”
I glare at the food on the stove. She ate breakfast, and she ate lunch, but I know now dinner is a bust. Even when I wake her up, I doubt she’ll eat much.
“Yeah,” he says, leaning against the doorframe. “I wish I had even half of her energy. Bottle it up and take it with me for those late nights on set.”
“Guess it beats the coke, huh?”
His expression falls when I say that. Right away, I feel like crap. Ugh.
“Sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s fine,” he says. “I deserve whatever you throw at me.”
“Maybe so, but I told myself long ago that I wouldn’t do that whole woman scorned thing.”
I finish dinner, putting everything together, turning off the stove as he stands there.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. “I can make you a plate.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know, but I’m offering.”
“Well, uh... okay.” He strolls over to the table. “If you don’t mind.”
I fix two plates of food. Spaghetti and garlic bread—nothing fancy, but we get by. I’m not a good cook, frankly. The noodles are still sort of crunchy and the sauce came out of a jar. We sit at the table across from each other. He waits until I take a bite before he even touches his fork.
