Page 36 of Love Notes & Lifelines
No. I cut that train of thought off before it can fully form. But I do have a cousin, Tabby. Why didn’t Cally consider her?
Daisie Dog paces behind the girls, ratcheting my frustration higher. What would Stella do?
She’d hug them. And Elijah saysmylove language is touch. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
“Emmy?” I ask, and she lifts her head from her bowl. “Do you need a hug?”
Tears spill from her green pools that are replicas of my own, and I’m hugging her tightly a second later. We cry together while Ruby flings orange pasta everywhere. I need to hug this kid more. Will that be enough though? I’ll add it to my list for Jane.
Jane or Stella. They’re equally important to the girls’ happiness right now, but only one of them feels like a betrayal of the other.
“We’ll figure this out, okay, lovebug? We will. I promise.” By the time she pulls away from my embrace, I’m horrified to see what Ruby’s done. Pasta is smashed into her hair, which is already filthy because I’ve been too scared to give her a real bath, so she’s been getting a mix of showers with me in a swimsuit, and baby wipes, but even I think we’ve gone past what’s sanitary and it’s time to soak her. Pasta’s everywhere. On the walls, the floor, even the ceiling.
This is what I get for having a neutral-colored apartment.
“Do you think she got any of it in her mouth?”
The faintest hint of a smile turns Emmy’s lips up when she shrugs.
“Probably not, huh?”
She shakes her head and puts a spoonful of pasta in her own mouth while I grab more for Ruby. This time, I feed her, and it goes about as well as it did when she fed herself.
When dinner’s over four million years later, I’m ready to admit defeat.
Emmy tugs on my pants. “Uncle Beck Daddy?”
I glance down and wish I knew what to do to take that sadness away from her beautiful little face. She’s too young to carry all this heartache. “Yeah, Emmy?” I ask while wiping Ruby’s hands and face before hefting her into my arms. I carry her to the family room and place her down on a mat that plays music when she moves.
“Wuby needs a tub.”
A tub. A bath.
With a heavy sigh, I nod and fake a smile. “Let’s call Jane and see if she has some pointers.”
Emmy’s eyes light up as she runs to her sister. “Yes,” she whispers. “Stella. Stella.”
“Stella? No, Emmy. We’ll call Jane.” She carries on as though she didn’t hear me, so I make the call…as visions of Stella fill my mind.
“Single Dad Hotline, I’m your helper. How can I help you?”
Her voice gives me pause. It’s the cadence—there’s something so familiar about it that a chill works down my spine.
I’m losing my damn mind, because now I’m hearing Stella in Jane’s voice.
Shaking my head, I focus my attention on the phone in my hand. “Don’t you know it’s me by now? I’ve only called you four hundred times. You don’t have to do the whole spiel every single time.”
“Oh, but I do. All I see on caller ID is SDH, so it could be you, or it could be another dad in the middle of an emergency. I have no way of knowing.”
“You have other clients now?” An unfounded and completely idiotic stab of jealousy sits in my gut.
“Not right now,” she admits. “But I don’t think it’s unheard of for us to have multiple at a time.”
“Huh.”
My hand is on my hip as I stare at the girls. Emmy sits crisscross next to Ruby, smiling up at me with so much sunshine she nearly blinds me.
“Did you need help with something tonight, Beck?”
