* * * *
Zoey manages to eat a little before she heads to the bedroom, leaving me and Nolan with Katie. After Katie gets her bath, and we help her get everything ready for in the morning, we settle on the couch with her between us to watch TV before her bedtime. I’m planning on taking her to school, because Nolan’s got a meeting, and I don’t know if Zoey’s headache will be better. I can be a little late in the morning.
“Do you think Mommy’s mad at me?” she asks out of the clear blue.
Nolan and I exchange a look, because before I respond to that, I want to confirm I heard what I think I heard.
From the wide-eyed shock on his face, I’m reasonably certain I did.
“Um,” he says, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Why would you think that, honey?”
She shrugs and continues staring at the TV.
I’m dying to jump in on this one, but I defer to Nolan.
For now.
I watch him while he’s obviously charting his course before diving into the conversational waters.
“Did something happen?” he finally asks her.
She shrugs again, her focus on the TV. “I think she got mad at me last night.”
My own anger is simmering, but I stay silent.
“Katie, sweetheart, what happened?” he asks.
It takes her a minute. “I asked her if on the days you have to pick me up from school on her weeks if I could just spend the night here instead? Or maybe stay here during the week with you, and with her on the weekend. I like mornings here better.” She looks at me. “No one’s yelling in the morning.”
My nails dig into my palm as I clench my left fist in an attempt to stay silent. I’m dying to call that bitch and ream her out, but I also know kids can be unreliable narrators filtering what they see and hear through their own special prisms.
Thus, I wait.
All due credit to Nolan, though. He doesn’t lose his chill in front of her. “Does Mommy yell at you in the mornings?”
“Not every morning. She doesn’t lay stuff out with me like you do. And she doesn’t make my lunch. She gives me money to buy lunch. But I like the notes you put in my lunch. I asked her to do that and she said she doesn’t have time.”
Fuuuuuuck.
Nolan’s gaze catches mine for the briefest of moments. I can practically hear him mentally chanting at me to stay calm.
Technically, this isn’t my battle.
But abso-fucking-lutely, this is my battle.
Nolan has always loved making lunch for her, and he keeps a pad of sticky notes and a pen in a drawer in the kitchen—one of the few kitchen things he wanted to make sure wasn’t packed for storage—so he can leave little hearts and smiley faces and things on her lunch. A little surprise for her when she opens it in school.
He’s an awesome dad, a natural dad.
If Jerilyn was an animal, she’d be a rodent or something that eats its own young rather than rearing them.
“Then what happened?” he finally asked. “When you told her that last night?”
She looks at me, then at Nolan. “She sent me to bed early.”
Yeeaah, this is giving my theory about a last-minute vacay with a boyfriend a lot of weight.
“Mommy told Aunt Zoey this trip was for work,” he finally says. “It’s probably a coincidence.”
