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Her head bobbed even as she continued to swipe her fingers back and forth across the iPad’s screen, connecting some sort of dots together. “Yeah, Momma said I had to.”
I chuckled. “You don’t like the bath?”
She sighed dramatically. “It’s not that I don’tlikeit. Bath’s mean bedtime, and I don’t really want to go to bed.” I placed my finger on the game she was playing and connected some dots that she’d missed. She giggled and patted my hand. “Good work, Daddy!”
“What don’t you like about bedtime?” I enquired.
“I miss you when I’m sleeping,” she said delicately.
“You do?”
“Mmm hmm, I don’t know how long we’ll be here or when we have to go home, so I want to spend as much time with you as I can.” She closed her game and placed it down on the bed. When she turned to look at me, I saw the sparkle in her eyes and knew she was trying to hold back tears. My brave little girl.
“Harlyn, I can tell you one thing for sure. I don’t know what’s going to happen but know this, it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing, I love you. I promise I will make more time to see you. If I could, it would be every single day.” I brushed her curly locks back from her face and watched as her face lit up.
“You mean it?”
“Have I let you down so far?”
She held out her pinky finger and I couldn’t help but laugh. It had been something I’d done once to try and stop her from crying when I had to leave her and Sugar and head home. It had stuck. I hooked her pinky with mine and squeezed. “Pinky promise?”
“Pinky promise, baby.”
She nodded her head sharply like it was a done deal. Turning around, she wiggled herself back under my arm like she’d been before. “Are you and Momma going to get back together?”
My heart skipped a beat. “Why would you ask that?” She shrugged, but I knew she was getting at something. “Do you want that?”
“No,” her answer was definitive and sure.
“Why not?”
“Because you like Chelsea.” My eyes widened, clearly I had underestimated how much Harlyn saw and heard around the clubhouse. “I like her too.”
“Harlyn...that’s not really something you need to worry about,” I told her quietly.
“I’m not worried,” she said casually as she picked the iPad back up and opened the reading application, flicking through the many different children’s books with her finger until she landed on one she liked—Cinderella.
This kid.
