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Chapter 29
She could tell herself it was just great sex, an infatuation, and that the rest of it would figure itself out all she wanted. It had been a falsehood before she had seen him standing there in the rain, and it was a blatant lie after. Even with everything she had to attend to at that moment, at the sight of Jordan, her heart had jostled with a mix of pain and happiness, distress and relief. And then the girls’ reactions to him and his to them—she could see how good this could have been, and how harmful if she let them be drawn into this whirlwind.
“Ms. Hays, ibuprofen if she experiences pain, and no food or drink except water for two hours, but the tooth is fine for now. We’ve put bonding to keep it in place. I want to see her again and assess in a week.” The dentist handed her a prescription.
“Hannah, this is for you”—the dentist handed Hannah a pink toothbrush—“for being so brave and calm, and my best patient.”
“Thank you. Can I get a sticker, too?” Hannah asked.
“Sure, you can. The nurse outside will give you as many as you’d like.”
“Can I get one, too?” Naomi asked.
“Of course.”
“She made my tooth break,” Hannah tattled.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Thanks, Dr. Perez. Come on, girls. We’ll talk about this at home.”
Hope led them to the car after a short stop at the nurse’s desk for stickers for both.
During the car ride back, relieved that Hannah was fine, she gave Naomi a speech. “We don’t do things like that. It might look funny on YouTube, but it’s not funny in real life. Many of the pranks you see there are either planned with the person they pull the prank on, or they don’t show you that those people were hurt or angry. They just show you it’s funny for them. But it’s not. Naomi, I know you’re smart, and considerate, and kind, and that you would never hurt Hannah on purpose, but what you did was dangerous, and we’re lucky it only ended with a broken milk tooth. I don’t want to think what would have happened if she had swallowed the marble.”
Naomi, who until then had held it together, began crying. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry, Hannah. I didn’t mean to, and I’ll never do it again.”
“I know you won’t,” Hope said, feeling torn again on the tightrope of parenthood—having to be the bad guy and the good guy, and the educator and comforter, and everything in-between, especially as she did most of it alone.
It was Hannah who leaned from her side of the back seat toward Naomi’s booster and wrapped her arm around her. “It’s okay, Naomi. Look how many stickers we got.”
By the time she entered Riviera View, the girls were chatting in the back seat, and Naomi was mimicking Hannah’s slightly slurred speech, a result of the anesthesia.
She hadn’t forgotten the man who was waiting for her. Her blood pressure must have climbed high as she made her way to their street because she began hearing it flowing in her ears as she hoped, and feared, to find him still there.
He wasn’t there, and her heart sank in disappointment. A surprising sentiment, given everything that had happened. There was also no sign of the rain when she pulled up next to the house.
As the girls unbuckled, she looked at her phone.
“I didn’t want to impose on you. I’m in Riviera and can be at yours, or anywhere else, if you can meet me. I need to see you. And if you can’t, just let me know Hannah is ok.”
She let the girls inside, put a frozen pizza in the oven, and dialed Aunt Sarah’s number.
“I can meet at the Promenade in an hour. Surfers’ Point. Hannah’s fine, but I need to get them to bed first,” she texted after getting a positive reply from Sarah.
“Thanks.”
Why did that single word of his hurt so badly? Maybe because he didn’t take her for granted, and because she had rarely heard a sincere thank you from the man who she had been married to for over ten years.
When Sarah arrived, the girls were already in bed, reading with their bedside lights on. Hope tiptoed out of the house in the dark orange of sundown.
On Madison Drive, the seafront promenade, Surfers’ Point, was empty of its usual pack of teenagers, glowing under a sky that became more purple by the minute. The streetlights that illuminated it were already on.
She saw him as she approached with the car, leaning his backside on the low stone wall that ran along the ten-foot cliff, his long legs stretched in front of him. When he noticed her, he straightened up.
His broad shoulders and the strong arms hiding beneath the grey dress shirt that he had on painfully reminded her of how much she would rather be wrapped in them. Hope had to remind herself of the chaos that she had faced that morning before the mini chaos with Hannah had taken precedence. It was time to deal with that, too.
It was chilly, but she felt colder inside. The warmth she knew was waiting in his arms was made harder to resist. She steeled herself.
