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All the kids start hurrying out the door, probably to play games or something, but the Locke kid stays.
I swallow my bite of cookie. “I used to play ball with your uncle.”
Then, the sweetest little voice I’ve ever heard comes from behind me. “Hey, mister. You play baseball?”
I turn as a tiny little thing walks toward the stainless-steel island, wearing a ball cap, blue dress, and a scuffed-up tiny pair of white Chuck Taylors. Her eyes are a light brown with specks of gold, and her sweet little face is peppered with freckles.
Takes a few beats for me to respond, but when I do, she’s at the cookie platter, grabbing a handful of snickerdoodles.
“I, um, I?—”
“You can’t take them all,” the Locke kid snips at her.
She huffs, “Mommy made me wait so you’d all getta chance to grab some first. Not my fault if you didn’t getta ’nuff, and don’t go cryin’ about it to nobody neither.”
She then looks back at me. “So, do you?”
I watch her throw a whole cookie in her mouth and can’t help but chuckle as I nod. “I do.”
“Are you my dad?”
Holy shit.
“You gotta stop asking people that,” the Locke kid whisper-hisses. “You got God the father, Nora. You don’t need no dad.”
Mouth full of cookie she narrows her eyes at him, “My Mom told me by daddy plays baseball.” She swallows and looks at me. “Well, mister, are you?”
There’s no way the first thing I say to this little girl, who could very possibly be my daughter, is going to be a lie. “Well, I’m not s?—”
“Nora.” Whit talks over me as she hurries in the kitchen and beelines it for the little cutie. She immediately snatches her hat off her head. “You can wear this when you get home. Now, scoot your boot out there. They’re playing trivia.”
She looks between me and her mother, shoves another cookie in her mouth, and heads out the door. The Locke kid is right behind her, leaving me and Whit alone.
“How old is she?” I ask as Whitley grabs two trays of finger sandwiches.
“Going on five,” she answers, heading toward the exit like she’s trying to outrun her past, which is precisely what she’s doing.
I grab the other two trays. “I gotta ask you, Whitley. Is?—”
She cuts me off with a curled-lip response. “You don’t have to do any such thing, Jonathon Paul.”
“Whit,” I hiss, following her.
“This discussion is not happening here.”
“The hell it’s not,” I whisper as I set the trays on the table beside hers.
She turns and glares at me. “Does that little girl look like she only took three minutes on a back road to create? Now, again, not here.”
“Never been a man who stepped up to the plate for the first time and hit a grand slam, Whit. Sorry to dis?—”
“Everything okay, honey?” Kal fucking Seward interrupts.
“Of course it is.” She picks up a quarter square of a cucumber sandwich and hands it to him. “Age-old debate—square or triangle? Pope and I never could see eye to eye on that.”
He leans in, and I know that asshole is gonna put his lips on her again, but she leans back.
“We’re in the Lord’s house, Mr. Seward, not the local bar.”
