He brushed my cheek with his thumb. “Hey—are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just relieved. Or maybe I mean released. Or both.”
“Me, too.” He grinned down at me. “In fact, I probably should be bawling like a baby.”
I smiled up. “Please don’t.”
“Okay,” he said, and kissed me instead.
48
matt
The girls burst through the front door a little after five o’clock. “Daddy! Daddy! We had the bestest day ever!”
Hope had left just ten minutes earlier. The day rated pretty high on my great-day scale, too. I came out of the kitchen, where I had just grabbed a beer.
“I got to feed the animals!” Zoey said.
“Me, too,” said Sophie, not about to be outdone.
I knelt, scooped them both up in my arms, and carried them to the sofa. They were getting to be more than an armful, I thought wistfully.
The girls fought for space on my lap. Jillian stood in the doorway, smiling.
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“Well, first, we drove and drove and drove,” Zoey related. She had a habit of giving factual timeline narratives. “And then we got out, and there were all these ducks.”
“And geese,” Sophie added.
“And other birds. And we bought some food, and fed them.”
“And one of the geese tried to bite me!”
“And then we all got into a covered wagon with an engine with some other families, and we went on a ride.”
“A safari!”
“Yeah. There were all kinds of animals.”
“An’ some of them are dangerous.”
Zoey looked down her nose at her little sister. “You mean endangered. They weren’t dangerous.”
“’Cept for the zebras. They’re mean, so you can’t feed them or ride them,” Sophie announced.
“They had camels, and a baby giraffe who ate right out of my bucket!” Sophie said. “I got to pet his head! He has the softest lips.”
“Yeah.” Zoey nodded. “Like Mommy’s used to be.”
A dagger went right through my heart. Could she even remember her mother? I wondered.
“And like Aunt Jillian’s,” Zoey quickly added. “She’s just like Mommy, ’cause they have the same genes.”
I avoided looking at Jillian.
“But she doesn’t wear them,” Sophie said. “’Cause Mommy was skinnier.”
