“Micah Lindley! You get your ass out of the car right now!” I’ve never been a mom, but I use my best approximation of a “mom voice” in the hopes he’ll snap out of it.
I watch his chest heave and his shoulders slump as he sighs in resignation, and he finally grabs the handle and opens the car door. I step aside so he has room to get out. When he does, he takes one look at Hailey’s tear-stained face and cringes.
He looks likehe’sthe one who has taken a beating. My heart hurts for him.
“Come on. We’ll go inside and talk about this, okay?” I’m a little gentler this time since he seems to be behaving.
Micah nods, and we file into the house. Thankfully, no crazy photographers followed us from the restaurant. Down the street, I spy Karen peeking through her curtains. I have a feeling she’ll have an opinion about tonight’s fiasco, but that’s something we’ll have to deal with later.
I set Hailey down in the living room, and she clings to my leg. Every time Micah moves, she whines and shies away from him.
I brush a stray hair behind her ear. “Hailey, honey, it’s just Daddy. He’s not going to hurt you.”
“He hurted the bad man,” she says around her thumb.
Micah crouches down and extends a hand to his daughter. She hides behind me again, and I swear I can see his heart shatter in real time.
“Hailey …” Micah’s voice breaks, and his face starts to crumple. “Hailey, sweetheart, Daddy would never hurt you. The bad man scared Daddy. I thought he was going to hurt you or Iris. I was just trying to keep the two of you safe. Do you understand, Hailey?”
Her grip on my leg gets tighter. “What ifIscare you?”
A tear slides down Micah’s cheek. His lip quivers. My heart seizes. “You could never scare me that way, honey. You could never, ever do anything that would make me hurt you.”
Tense seconds creep by as Micah squats with his hand out. He doesn’t move, almost like he’s trying to convince a feral cat that he’s okay to sniff. Bit by bit, Hailey inches out from behind me. She takes a hesitant step towards her father, then another. One more step, and she’ll be far enough away from me that she won’t be able to keep hold of my leg. There won’t be anything for her to hold onto—except Micah’s hand.
She lets go of my leg … takes one more step … and launches herself into her father’s arms. Micah scoops her up, sobbing into her hair as he holds her.
“I’m sorry, Hailey. Daddy’s so sorry …”
I lower myself to my knees next to the two of them and encircle them with my arms. They both need some comfort right now.
Unfortunately, I can’t stay like this. I have calls to make and spin to start.
“Hey, Hailey,” I say, and she looks up at me. “Honey, would you like Daddy to read a book to you? I’ve got to make some phone calls in my office at home, but I bet it would make Daddy really happy if you let him read to you.”
Hailey nods, and Micah gives me a grateful smile. He reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it perhaps a little too tightly.
“Thank you,” he says.
I stand up and grab my keys from my purse. “Hey, we’re a team. That means if I can help you, I’m going to, but I need to do this help from home.”
When I leave, Micah’s carrying Hailey to the living room to pick out a book for him to read to her. She seems to have calmed down, so that’s at least one crisis averted. I shut the door behind me—
—and run smack into Karen, who for some reason is standing on Micah’s front step.
“Oh! I’m sorry, Karen.”
She looks me up and down with her lips drawn into a thin line. “Leaving awfully fast, there, Iris. Trouble in paradise?”
I don’t have time for this crap. “Look, Karen, I have to get home. It’s a work thing.”
“At seven o’clock at night?”
“An ad exec never sleeps!” I flash her my best fake smile and push past her.
Karen pulls out her phone and taps the screen a few times. “Going to go try to cover up tonight’s little disaster at the restaurant?” she calls out to me as I head down the sidewalk.
I freeze in place and pivot to see what she’s talking about. On her phone screen, a gif of Micah knocking down the photographer plays over and over again. My stomach lurches, and the need to get home and call our agency’s PR department grows.
