Page 27 of Lovewell Lane

Tessa finished her drawing and joined right as I was getting ready to add the eggs. I shifted the empty bowl to sit in front of Tessa’s seat at the bar top. “Do you know how to crack open eggs?”

Derek took a seat next to her at the bar, and with them both looking at me with those same inscrutable dark brown eyes, I felt like I was teaching a class on how to get away with murder.

“Yes, I do,” Tessa said with quiet confidence.

“Great, crack four into that bowl, please.” I pushed the egg carton toward her. “We’re making cookies. But I thought I’d let you pick the flavor.”

I stepped aside to grab our options to put in front of her. “We can make plain chocolate chip, walnut chocolate chip with sea salt, or sugar cookies with icing.”

“Chocolate chip!”

“Heard,” I said with a smile.

As we worked, I did my best to get to know Tessa. She seemed like a sweet girl, and I had a bad habit of talking through silence. Especially when Derek was in the room.

“So, you like coloring. Is art your favorite thing to do?”

Tessa nodded. “I like sea animals, too.”

“Ooo, what’s your favorite?”

“Otters.” The kid definitely took after her father with their one-word answers.

“Fun, have you ever seen one before?”

Her head shot up to look at me. She shook her head. “No, but they have them at the Georgia Aquarium.”

“Oh, I bet. Isn’t that the one that has the whale sharks? I’ve always wanted to see those.”

“Whale sharks?”

“Mhm.” I grabbed aluminum foil to line a pan. “They’re even bigger than you can imagine. Bigger than this whole house. I think they have a couple at that aquarium. I can Google it.”

Tessa looked over at Derek with an excited smile. Derek shot her back a small one of his own. “We want to go there at some point,” Derek added quietly.

“You definitely should. It sounds like your cup of tea. I once saw seals when I was doing my Route 66 road trip in California, and there were soooo many of them all on the same beach. They were so big, and there were even baby seals. It was great.”

“Maybe you can go too,” Tessa said quietly. “To the aquarium.”

“Oh,” I blurted. “Yeah, that could be fun.” There wasn’t a shot in hell Derek would be interested in me crashing his family trip, but I wasn’t going to be the jerk and tell a kid that. Plus, I was honored that she would want me there. I would break into the aquarium to keep that smile on her face.

Baking really seemed to be natural for Tessa. We whipped up two batches of chocolate chip cookies in no time. As we baked, her one-word answers got less and less common.

When the cookies were officially in the oven, she declared, “Let’s show Margo the farm!”

“Someone needs to watch the cookies, Tess.” Derek’s voice startled me. He’d been so quiet, I forgot he was even in the room.

“Can’t Grandad?” she whined.

Derek stood up from his bar stool. “You have to ask. He can’t say no to you.”

She nodded with resolve as if it was a challenge and walked off to the front door. Derek strolled over to the front window to watch as she walked to the RV parked out front. I busied myself with cleaning up the total mess we made.

“You don’t have to clean up.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t mind. Cleaning is calming for me.”

“You’re good with her,” Derek said, his eyes still on the window.

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