Page 88 of It Must Be Fate

Suki walks up to me with a cup in each hand. “Smores for me.” Handing me the second, “And peanut butter for you.”

The girls alternate picking my flavor for me every week.

“Great choice.”

She heads to the till and pulls out a pint-sized wallet. Following, I ask, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re buying you froyo this time, Uncle Roro. With our pocket money,” she announces proudly.

I snatch the bill out of her hand before the cashier can grab it. “I don’t think so. Put this back in your wallet.”

“But—”

“Instead of buying me froyo, why don’t you tell me if that little bitch Sarah is still being a cunt?” The cashier gasps at my word choice. I shove my black card her way to shut her up. “Piss off.”

Sarah is a girl in their ballet class. When I’d picked them up last week, Astra had been in tears because Sarah The Cunt had thought it a funny prank to hide my goddaughter’s tutu.

Her parents’ home address has been imprinted in the back of my eyelids since, waiting only for a greenlight from the girls for me to pay them a little visit.

“Uncle Roro,” she giggles. “You can’t say that.”

I take my card back with a glare to the nosy cashier and usher the three of them out onto a patio and to one of the tables. “Why not?”

“Mum says it’s a bad word,” Astra answers.

“Your mum is too stuck up sometimes.”

“Hey, that’s mean.”

I shrug. “Anyway, I can say it when she’s messing with my favorite girl.”

Astra gives me a delighted smile, my slight against her mother easily forgotten. “You’re so silly.”

“I spilled cranberry juice on her tutu when no one was looking,” Suki says easily, scooping some froyo into her mouth, “So she was too busy crying to be messing with Astra.”

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” I praise her. “Initiative. Revenge. Creative retribution approach. I love it. Very well done. What else?”

“Hmm, I stuck my gum under her shoe.”

“Excellent. If you sneak in a pair of scissors, next time you can cut a big hole in her tutu.”

Suki’s eyes widen. “Oooh.”

Froyo time isn’t just fun and games. The girls learn valuable, real-world lessons and advice from their Uncle Roro.

“We look after each other,” Ivy says proudly. “We’ll look after Rowan when she’s old enough too, don’t you worry.”

The heat that powers through my veins at the mention of my daughter’s name nearly burns me alive from the inside.

She’s three now, with a head of jet-black hair and green eyes, and spends her time running into things or tripping over them in ways that get more comical with every passing day. To say that I’m obsessed is an understatement.

And I’m not the only one.

“She’s already well protected. I don’t think her three brothers are going to let anything happen to her.”

“Yes, but they can’t be everywhere. We’re girls. We can.”

A very valid point I’d never even considered. I look over at the girls where they sit on their side of the table like their very own little council of elders dispensing advice to me.

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