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I nod. “The last time I saw him was when I was eleven. And I’mold, so it’s been a long time.”
That elicits a tiny giggle from her, and her legs start swinging again. “You’re not old. Papa Jack is old. What was your daddy like?”
The question hits me like a ton of bricks. For a moment, I have no response. Whatwasmy daddy like? I’ve spent the past twenty-two years slowly growing more and more bitter towards the man, to the point I never think about the good times we had together. I was eleven, after all. Sometimes Jess will bring things up about our childhood from before Mom died and she was six at the time of the accident. How can she remember dancing on our father’s feet every day after he got home from work or how he would laugh whenever Mom tried to tickle him because he wasn’t ticklish, but I struggle to pick out one happy memory?
I’m about to tell Ella I can’t remember—just like I’m not going to discuss my qualms with her father, I’m not going to tell her about the last time I saw my dad—when a distant memory starts to surface. It’s fuzzy and incomplete, but I decide to risk showing a little emotion by answering her question.
“Well,” I say slowly, “he was good at drawing things. He was working at an architectural firm—which is basically a place where people design what a building will look like on paper for the builders—and he was good at it. Sometimes he would bring home a bluepr—I mean, a drawing he was working on, and ask me where I thought they should put the bathroom or something.”
Ella’s eyes widen. “Really?”
“Really. I thought it was so fascinating to see what he did at work. And then, only one time, he let me go to work with him for a day. It was in the summer when I wasn’t in school, and I think I was about ten.” That’s a slight lie. I know I was ten, because it was the last summer my dad was in my life. “I got to go to a meeting with him and draw on my own piece of paper in his office, and then we went out to lunch together. I remember thinking I wanted to be just like him when I grew up.”
Those last words finish on a softer note as I recall that day. I was so excited to wear my suit, even though it was a little small, and spend the whole day with Dad at work. In fact, I woke up at five that morning and my mom told me I had to go back to sleep because it was too early. I couldn’t fall back asleep, though, so I lay there awake in my bed and dreamt of the day I could be exactly like my father.
“But you’re a cop,” Ella says. “Did he change to a cop?”
I find something of a smile. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Then why’d you become a cop?”
Because of John, the father who wasn’t by blood but by choice.
“Do you remember going up to that pretty house on the lake where my sister has her kitchen?”
Ella nods.
“Well, John Bryant and his wife and family own that inn. John used to be a cop, and he was someone very important to me when I was a kid. Even though he wasn’t my real dad, he kind of acted like one for my sister and I after our dad…was gone.”
She ponders this for a moment. “Like you are for me and Eli?”
For the second time in five minutes, it’s like her question physically hits me. “I don’t know,” I admit. “Do you, uh, think of me that way?”
“Well, you always make me and Eli smile lots,” she says, taking my question surprisingly seriously. Who would’ve expected to have such a deep conversation with a five-year-old over ice cream? “And you took me on a date for my birthday, so I kinda think so, ‘cause you didn’t have to.”
I’m quiet because I don’t know what to say to that.
“So, I guess you’re kinda like him.” Ella abandons her ice cream by setting the cup on the bench beside her, then scoots over and snuggles into my side, one arm sliding behind me and the other draped across my abdomen. She lets out a little sigh, her next words drowsy as though she’s getting tired. And considering it’s half past nine, that’s not shocking. “And you’re a cop too, so you’ll always protect us.”
A lump forms in my throat as her words sink into my heart, and I set my own sundae aside to wrap my arms around her, my gaze focused forward.
So you’ll always protect us.
It’s entirely foreign to me, but a wave of longing rolls through me so forcefully I feel rocked to my core. Iwantto be their protector. I want to be the one Jenna calls when she’s having a hard day and she needs a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to. I want to play what feels like countless games ofGo Fishand see the excitement in Ella’s eyes when she wins. I want to let Eli sit on my lap and drive his toy car up and down my arm even if it pulls every last hair on it. I want to be the man who proves to Jenna she is so freaking worthy of a love story like the songs in her playlist that I’ll hold her hand or kiss her forehead or dance in the rain or kiss her until she forgets her own name. I want to be the man who comes home to Jenna at the end of the day and has the right—no, theprivilegeof sliding my arms around her waist and pressing a kiss to her neck and telling her how much I love her.
How much I love her.
I…love Jenna.
Somewhere along the way in the three years I’ve known Jenna, Ella, and Eli, it stopped being the “least I could do” to drop groceries off on her doorstep every week and offer to talk for a few minutes. Instead of feeling responsible for keeping Pete from coming around and stirring up trouble, it became a fear of losing the woman I didn’t know I was in love with.
Maybe I’ve loved her from that very first day I saw her, when she was pregnant and still legally bound to another man. Perhaps, looking back on it now, I noticed the sadness in her eyes when I introduced myself to her and Pete shortly after they came to town, and couldn’t figure out why a woman with a successful husband, a beautiful little girl, and a baby on the way could look so miserable.
I don’t know. I don’t think I can fully pinpoint when I fell for Jenna, but I do know that, if she’s willing to let me, I want to be that man. The one who inspires and nurtures Ella and Eli like John inspired and nurtured me. The one who doesn’t leave when life gets tough, but instead shelters Jenna from the brunt end of the storm so we can weather it together.
It’s a scary thought for me, putting myself out there. I don’t know if she even feels the same way. And it might very well wreck me if she doesn’t, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Because maybe I read it wrong, but that first day at Marie’s house when we were standing on the porch, there was something between us. A pull that was palpable, the tension of that breathless moment like a rope stretched from me to her and being tugged on from both sides. There’s a reason I didn’t kiss her that day, and it’s because I wasn’t ready.
But now…
