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Logan laughs, and I chuckle quietly in the corner.
“You’re smart. I’ll give you that. But the kitchen is no place to be running around.”
“I know that. What smells so nice?” She turns to me. “Did you make breakfast?”
I nod, feeling shy all of a sudden.
“Yeah. I did.”
She throws her arms around me. “Thank you! I thought we would have to eat another of Dad’s meals. I like yours already.”
“You’ve not tried it,” I point out. “It’s not like I remember how to cook anything.”
Madison shoots me a serious look. “You don’t have to. If you can, then you will.”
I turn to Logan, and he shrugs.
“I don’t know what to tell you. She’s smarter than me.”
I chuckle at that, pushing aside the feeling of dread that carried when Logan spoke about my memory.
“Alright. Let me finish the pasta, and then we know who cooks better. Deal?”
“Deal.” They both reply.
Hours later, plates licked clean and stomachs full; Logan gets a call, so Madison and I end up clearing the dishes to the kitchen.
“I can do it myself,” I tell her. “You don’t have to stand on your tiptoes.”
She shakes her head.
“I want to do it too. When my dad cooks, and it’s just the two of us, he tells me not to worry about doing the dishes because my hands can't fit inside the sink. But I can't allow him to cook and do the dishes, too.
And there’s nobody else that will do it, so I have to learn.”
Her words strike a deep chord in me—a reminder that while she might be a smart nine-year-old, she’s also in touch with reality.
She knows that it’s just her and Logan, and she’s trying to do her best to make sure her father doesn’t have to do everything alone.
“Uhm, Madison… if you don’t mind me asking… what about your mom?”
Her hands stop moving briefly, and I assume I have said the wrong thing. Then she shrugs and continues washing while I scrape the dirt off the plates.
“She died when I was four,” she says in a soft voice. “So, I don’t know much about her. But Dad says she was the nicest person ever, and she had a big heart. He says I have a big heart just like her.”
“Well, I don’t know your mom either, but you have a very kind heart. And you're a smart young lady, who the world needs a lot of. That’s why you’re going to go on and make a lot of people smile when you become a nurse someday.”
She raises a brow.
“A nurse? I want to be a cop.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to say that?” I bend low and whisper. “Your dad is going to have our heads.”
“It’s okay,” she whispers back. “Uncle Ethan says Daddy is going to ‘come around.’I think that means he doesn’t like it now, but he will like it later.”
I giggle, feeling like a schoolgirl let into a very juicy secret. “Are you sure? He seemed pretty serious when he said it.”
“Uncle Ethan says there’s nothing to worry about.”
