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Barns had been a dick about it. Meg had chided me.He’s an intellectual,she’d say, as if acknowledging it automatically made me know how to parent.
I didn’t know how to raise an intellectual. After Mama abandoned us and I got stuck looking after my siblings, I didn’t experience a kid like my son. My brothers had practically been born in the mud and raised in the saddle, and while they weren’t dense, they weren’t sensitive like Grayson. Same with Aggie, the youngest of us all. I’d tried protecting her, and she’d only resented me and the family, leaving home and staying gone for good.
Now she was in Crocus Valley with her new husband, and I’d followed her, like we’d reversed stereotypical roles. Only I felt like she understood. She knew what it was like to grow up under Barns’s rule and wanted things to be different. Hell, all of us did. With Meg gone, I was back in familiar territory but still on foreign land.
The blower stopped, and I punched the button again. I couldn’t cross my arms over my chest. My shirt was full of milk. Leaning against the wall might get me dirtier than any spilled drink. Waiting for clothes to dry only gave me time to think about how much work waited for me.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. What the hell was I going to do?
Grayson’s little face was tipped down while he watched the wetness slowly diminish. His blank expression was the opposite of when we walked in. He poked at the red of the fabric. “Spider-Man’s dry.”
“He is. Want to back up a step and let the air hit the shorts?”
“I don’t care about the shorts.”
“I do.”
He glanced at me like he had to see if I was serious about drying the milk on his shorts. Then he did as I asked. He did a hip wiggle that would’ve made Elvis jealous. Then another.
“Whatcha doing, bud?”
He swirled his hips and gave another thrust. I bit the inside of my cheek. For having no balance or coordination, he liked to bust a move, but after his meltdown, he didn’t need to feel like I was laughing at him.
“Moving around.” He thrust his opposite hip and broke into a full-body boogie. Then he stepped back, inspecting his crotch. “All dry. Your turn.”
I stood steadfastly still while I dried my shirt. Grayson whipped his hands out behind me, making web-flinging motions. Meg would hate that, but Aggie had gotten him the shirt. I should probably buy a few more plain polos that had been his mother’s style so I didn’t feel like I fell short of the expectations she’d left me with.
“Done.” I opened the door, and Grayson sprinted out.
When I rounded the corner, I expected to see Thelma at the booth with Ivy. Thelma was nowhere to be seen, but there was a stranger sitting next to Ivy, bent over a coloring sheet of a castle.
She murmured softly to Ivy, and while I could only see the woman’s back, my curiosity was turning to desperation to see her face. The curve of her shoulders was graceful, and her glossy dark brown hair tumbled down her back.
I gave myself a shake, shame filling me. I lost my wife less than a year ago.
I wasnotinterested.
“Excuse me?” I said, as Grayson scooted into the hopefully dry booth.
The woman tipped her face toward me, and my stomach clenched.
Jesus. She had high cheekbones and wide-set blue eyes that combined to give her a Snow White look. Her skin practically glowed under the fluorescent lights, and those didn’t do anyone justice.
“You must be Dad,” she said with a smile in her voice. But for as sweet and Disney-princess innocent as she looked, there was a sharpness to her gaze that couldn’t be missed. Not by me. I’d seen the shrewdness in Barns and my wife, but their critical view of the world was different than this girl’s. She was sizing me up, reading me. Judging me from the button-up, pinstripe white shirt with the crusty dried milk stain to the feather-gray slacks and my chestnut-brown loafers.
“I am. And you are?” My question came out harsher than intended, but I had left my daughter with someone I...trusted was a strong word, but I thought Thelma would do what she said for at least five minutes.
“Tova,” she said with a practiced smile. “I’ve already met Ivy.” She took her attention off me as if it were as simple as breathing when I couldn’t look away from the way her creamy skin shone like expensive satin. “And you are?” she asked my son.
“Grayson,” he said, going back to his coloring.
“Grayson and Ivy. Lovely names.” She scooted out of the booth, and I realized I was looming over her. I jumped back before her knee brushed my slacks.
Thelma swooped in with two fresh milks. “Gotcha new glasses. The booth is cleaned. Tova watched your girl for me.” She eyed me with a hearty challenge. “She’s like a daughter to me.”
As if I were in the market.
If I was, Thelma’s look saidno, I wasn’t.
