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The girls each release a little squeal before stabbing small pieces of broccoli with their forks.
Ten years ago, being a father was the furthest thing from my mind. After meeting and falling in love with Emma, it was the only thing I could think about. I wanted little versions of us, I wanted more of Emma to love, I wanted the whole package.
Never once did I imagine I’d be doing this alone.
“You go first,” Adeline tells Marabel. “If you plug your nose, you won’t taste it. That’s what Noah Goldberg told me at school. Try it.”
“Is that true, Daddy?” Marabel asks me.
“Sure,” I say.
It’s little moments like this—the ones that Emma would have loved—that send a painful squeeze to my chest.
It’s hard not having anyone to share these with.
Of course there’s Theodora, but I’m not going to blow her phone up fifty times a day with every little adorable thing my girls say or do. She already thinks I’ve lost all my marbles and then some. She doesn’t need a constant stream of reminders about how isolated and narrowly focused I’ve become. I work. I come home. I do the dad thing. That’s it. That’s my life right now.
We’re an island, the three of us.
“Hello, hello,” Theodora calls from the front entry. Years ago, I gave her her own key—mostly for convenience but also because she insisted that she should have access to the house in case of emergencies. “Special delivery for the Bellisario girls . . .”
Adeline and Marabel abandon their dinners, and I realize I wasn’t paying attention and have no idea whether they tried their broccoli.
“Careful, careful,” Theodora tells them as they wrap her long legs in a joint hug. She makes her way to the kitchen island, placing two small paper bags on the countertop. She retrieves the first ceramic item—a teddy bear painted at least a hundred different colors. “This one is Miss Marabel’s stunning masterpiece.” Slipping her hand into the second bag, she pulls out a pineapple piggy bank glazed in a bold combination of sunflower yellow and army green. “And one breathtakingly gorgeous piece of fruit for Miss Adeline.”
The girls fawn over their creations, and Theodora watches with a twinkle in her steely gaze.
“Little artists,” she says before giving me a wink. “It clearly runs in the family. You should think about enrolling them in classes at the Manhattan Children’s Art Academy. They have pottery and ceramics, sketching, watercolors, mixed media . . . I have an in there. One of the founders is an old colleague of mine. I know they have a wait list, but I’m sure they’d make room for the girls if I asked.”
While I could if I wanted to, I’m not going to bump anyone else from the wait list. When Emma and I first became parents, we both agreed our main goal was to not raise spoiled, entitled little brats. I could easily afford to enroll them in the best schools, hire them each their own nannies and drivers, and buy them every last Barbie or American Girl doll in existence, but I’ve been around long enough to see what kind of women little girls like that grow up to become.
The world already has an abundance of those types.
No need to add two more to the mix.
“Oh, no. Would you look at the time? I’m going to be late for dinner,” Theodora says as she walks around the island. She wraps me in a hug before cupping my cheeks. “You need anything else before I take off?”
I’m about to shake my head when I remember the bee earring.
“Yes, actually.” I swipe it off the countertop and hand it to her. “Can you give this to Margaux for me tomorrow?”
Inspecting the earring for a moment, her gaze flicks to mine. Curiosity washes over her expression, and I realize she’s probably assuming Margaux slept over and left those here.
“I spent some time with her earlier today. Briefly,” I tell her. “This must have fallen off in my car on the way home.”
“Mm-hmm,” she says, as if she half doesn’t believe me, and then a sly smile spreads across the side of her red lips. Placing the earring in a small compartment of her purse, she adds, “All right then. Girls, give me hugs. I’m off to stuff my face with the most delicious lobster bisque in all of Manhattan. Someday I’ll take you there too. Until then, you’ll simply have to take my word for it.”
The girls pile onto my aunt, who gives them what I can only describe as a skinny version of a bear hug. She’s always been a natural beanpole, much to my fad-diet-addicted mother’s dismay.
A half an hour later, the girls are in their tub—bath bombs, glow sticks, and all because they both swore up, down, and sideways that they did, in fact, try their broccoli.
