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“Come on, Emma, let’s go together,” Jillian offered with a wink to me, and the two of them made their way to the restrooms while I watched with crossed arms.
I really couldn’t believe it. A few weeks ago, if someone had told me I’d be not only out with my daughter and Jillian Hargrove at the park, but that I’d be enjoying it, I’d have called them insane.
Emma wasn’t the only one to thank for that, either, I thought as I smiled softly. It hadn’t hit me until now, but even in this short time, Jillian had changed me in a profound way.
Even though Jillian had been there all along, it was only now that I could really appreciate everything she was capable of.
A few minutes later, Emma came running out of the bathroom with an excited smile on her face, Jillian rolling her eyes behind her with an apologetic grin at me.
“Daddy-Daddy-Daddy! Jillian says we can go get ice cream!”
22
Jillian
“Daddy, is Jillian coming home with us?” piped up Emma, sitting across the table from us at the ice cream shop.
I froze, looking at Bruin with worry. How the hell were we supposed to handle a question like that?
But Bruin just smiled softly. “Not for now, Em.”
“But she’s really pretty,”
the little girl added, pointing at me with her tiny pink spoon. Her pudgy face was smudged with chocolate. I couldn’t help but smile at her.
“You’re right. Jillian is very pretty.” Her father reached under the table to take my hand. I gave it a light squeeze.
“So? Why can’t we keep her?” asked Emma, dropping her spoon in the little cup of quickly-melting ice cream and folding her arms over her chest.
She gave Bruin a squinty, suspicious look. One thing was for sure, she had definitely inherited her father’s stubbornness and fiery personality. It was adorable.
“It doesn’t quite work that way, sweetheart.” He chuckled. “Are you going to finish your ice cream? Why are you avoiding all the sprinkles? You asked for them specifically.”
“They’re crunchy,” she said, shrugging.
“Well, yeah. They’re sprinkles,” Bruin commented, raising an eyebrow.
Emma wrinkled her tiny nose. “I don’t like crunchy.”
“You just like the colors, huh?” I said. Emma grinned and nodded.
“Rainbow!” she exclaimed, seemingly forgetting all about her line of inquiry. But then she made a shockingly solemn face for a three-year-old, and said, “Jillian, do you like me?”
I tilted my head to one side and nodded. “Of course I like you.”
“Then why won’t you come home with us?” she asked, her sweet baby voice so sad and innocent it nearly made tears come to my eyes. She really was the cutest.
Bruin sighed. “You have to be patient, Em. Jillian doesn’t live in California. She lives in Georgia. That’s where her home is.”
“Why?” she asked, frowning.
Bruin and I exchanged exasperated looks. Why seemed to be her favorite question. But then again, she was barely out of her terrible twos. “Her house is in Georgia. In Atlanta,” Bruin said simply. Emma did not look convinced in the slightest.
“Can’t she move her house here?” she inquired with a shrug, as though it were the most logical suggestion in the world. I giggled and she looked at me with a vaguely scandalized face.
“Well, it’s an apartment, actually,” I said. “I can’t fit my whole apartment in a suitcase and take it with me to California.”
“Why not? Is it a really big apartment?” she asked, endlessly persistent.
