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It’s not what’s good for us.
“Do whatever you need to do to become a healthier version of you.” I meet her eyes one last time. “But I swear to christ, you’re not welcome here with your tiny clothes and snide bullshit. Miss Penny?” I extend my arm and wait for our sweet nanny to follow.
It’s the end of the day, anyway. Time for her to go home. So I wait while she hurriedly grabs her purse and phone, then she collects her coat on the way out the door and precedes me to the top of the stairs as I pull the door shut at my back.
On the other side, a lamp smashes against the wall and showers the floor with glass shards, as broken as the woman who threw it.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Fletcher.” Penny shrugs her coat on and juggles her purse from one arm to the other. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”
“You didn’t.” I link my arm in hers—she’s about eighty years old and wobbly on her feet after a long day—and start down the stairs. “You shielded my baby.”
“But she’s Jada’s baby too. I should never stand between a child and their parent. But the things Ms. Watson was saying were just so…”
“Backhanded?” I guess. “Nasty?”
“Sneaky,” she breathes out. “She wasn’t even so brave as to be forward about it. Her words were like termites, Mr. Fletcher. Hidden in plain sight, and destructive to a structure’s foundations. She said things about skinny girls.‘Dancing girls have to be petite.’She said that professional dancers must be like her, and Mia—”
“Is too much like me?” I conclude with a sigh. “Yeah, I figured.”
“She said it nicely,” Penny concedes. “So very saccharine. But that only made it more confusing for a little girl trying to squeeze into a bodysuit that didn’t fit. This is the second time in as many weeks that Ms. Watson has bought clothes that are too small and attempted to talk her little girl into them, so I just…” she shakes her head. “I couldn’t just sit by and listen. But I didn’t intend for things to escalate the way they did. I would never place Mia in the center of conflict on purpose. But—”
“Jada blew up?”
Again, it’s so easy to guess.
Penny nods, and we turn at the next landing, continuing our descent, while the sound of footsteps cominguppiques mild curiosity in the back of my mind.
“Jada’s a passionate woman,” I tell her. “Always has been. That’s why it was so easy to love her.”
“And that carried through in conversations?” she interprets correctly. “Loud arguments, and louder lovemaking?”
I choke out a laugh. No woman on the planet can make me blush the way the elderly Miss Penny can. “Basically,” I admit. “She was all passion, all the time, from hot to cold and everything in between. It’s why she was so successful in dance. It’s why we married so quickly and, soon after, made a baby without a care in the world for how reality would look for a professional dancer and a homicide cop. Who would stay home with her? Who would raise her? We had no clue. We just knew we wanted more of what we already had. We were greedy and impulsive.”
“Do you still love her?” She turns her head to look up at me, trusting me entirely to navigate us safely down the stairs and save her from a misstep. “Do you find yourself wishing to be together again?”
“I find myself wishing she didn’t screw us over,” I concede. “Wishing she was stronger and less inclined to self-medicate. Wishing she was brave enough to stand up to her mother’s abuse and sayno more. But do I love her?” I drop my eyes to my feet and study them as we walk. “No. I fell out of love the moment she chose herself over our daughter.”
“Resentment?” she wonders. “Is that what leads your emotion?”
“No. I simply can’t accept that someone who treats their child like shit is a good person.” Reaching up with my free hand, I scrub my fingers through my hair. “To love someone means tolikethem. And Jada’s inability to love our daughter more than she loves herself makes it impossible for me to like her anymore.” I drop my hand and exhale. “If not for the fact she’s Mia’s mom, I’d have already removed her from my life.”
“Oh, hi, Mr. Fletcher!” Deena comes around the next landing and smiles up at me. “Heading out again?”
Panic lances through my blood as I yank my arm from Penny’s and look the girl up and down. “Where’s Mia?”
Not waiting for an answer, I dash to the next landing and stare down through the gaps. “Deena! Where is she?”
“Downstairs.” She continues up and studies me like I’ve lost my damn mind. “She’s with some lady I don’t recognize.” Nonchalant, she tucks mail beneath her arm and flashes a carefree grin. “Mia seemed to know her, though, so I left it alone.”
With a curse under my breath, I leave Penny behind and sprint down the last flight of stairs, wondering who thiswomancould be. It’s not Minka; she’s hurt, and wherever she is, Archer is undoubtedly following. It’s not Aubree, because she texted only a few minutes before I left the station to tell me that Tim was looking at Daisy’s ass and she was mad about it.
He wasn’t doing any such thing, I’m sure of it. But Aubree’s interpretation of everything he does these days is colored with anger.
“Mia!” I skip steps and risk breaking my ankle, but relief floods me instead when I slam into the wall at the next landing and hear her voice one floor down. “Mia! Stop there, baby. Don’t go out that door!”
“Daddy?” She calls back, less tearful than when I sent her away. “I’m going to Uncle Tim’s for dinner,” she chit-chats. “Can we go to Uncle Tim’s for dinner?”
I burst down the final flight and skid to a stop on the bottom step, only to find my daughter’s angelic smile, and her hand wrapped around Seraphina Lewis’ like they belong together.
