Page 40 of Forget Me Not
“I’m sorry, I’m in such a rush! Can’t ever get out of this house when I want to—you know where everything is, Kayla’s watching a movie in the den, bedtime starts at 6:30. She’ll walk you through her bedtime routine and we should be back around ten. Text me if you need anything! Thank you, love you, bye!”
The last five words came out as one as the door slammed shut.
Syve made her way to the den where, true to Cam’s word, she found Kayla sitting in a tiny beanbag in front of the television.
“Hey, baby girl, whatcha watching?”
The little girl turned her head entirely toward her before taking her eyes off of the screen, but as soon as their eyes met, Kayla’s big, green eyes doubled in size.
“Annie Sy!”
Curly blonde pigtails bounced as she scrambled out of her seat, running and jumping into Syve’s awaiting arms. Syve sighed with a smile and returned the child’s hug, holding her tightly and waiting for her to let go first. Her heart warmed and broke, all at once.
She thought of Noah, of how he should be this big now.
Not for the first time she wondered what would have happened had she been home that night. Could she have saved them? Or at least been given the mercy to join them?
With one final, big squeeze, the toddler pulled back.
“Hi!” She smiled up at Syve. “Are you gonna play with me?”
Quickly wiping her eyes before any traitorous tears could make it to her cheeks, Syve nodded.
“I am going to play with you! Do you want to finish your movie? Or do you want to show me all your super cool toys?”
“TOYS!” Kayla squealed, jumping up and down a few times before spinning around and dashing across the room to the stairs, bear crawling her way up. “Come on Annie Sy!”
An hour later, after going over the names of every single stuffed animal the toddler owned, the two found themselves in the kitchen. According to the tiny human it was dinner time, which meant ice cream and noodles.
Syve was certain that was a little bit of a stretch and instead asked if chicken nuggets or mac and cheese would be okay. A short lesson followed in which Syve learned that mac and cheese is actually made with noodles and because of that, it would be okay to have for dinner.
Which was perfect.
Cooking was one thing Syve hadneverbeen able to do. In fact, she failed a culinary class in high school after she attempted to boil water but forgot about the water, which led to the pot running dry and burning the bottom. The pot was ruined and so was her grade.
Luckily, there was a fantastic vegetarian restaurant in town that just so happened to make the best mac and cheese to ever exist, and they delivered. Syve set her charge up with crayons and a stack of coloring books before pulling her phone out to call in an order for an obscene amount of pasta.
“I’m sorry, we’ve had two people call out today—we’re too short staffed and can’t fulfill any delivery orders right now. If you’d like we can do a pick-up order?”
A chaotic cacophony in the background forced the girl on the other end of the line to need to yell to be heard.
“Oh, no, thank you. I wouldn’t be able to pick up the order.”
“Sorry again, have a good night.”
Click.
Now what was she supposed to do?
Her phone lit up with a text from Bastien—they’d been texting off and on all day. She swiped open to a picture of him holding four baby ducks in his cupped hands.
Bas:
Look what Hattie just brought in…
Syve:
OMG, No!
