“Yeah,” Daisy said, unbuckling the belt. “I am sleepy.”
She lifted her little boy out of the seat, then set him down and watched him walk into the house. Zach appeared in the doorway and smiled at her.
Seeing him in her house like that ...
Was it her house?
She wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Except that seeing him here felt better than it did worse, that was for sure.
She collected her purse and closed the car door, walking into the house.
“We ordered Olive Garden,” Zach said.
“You what?”
“Avery said he likes Olive Garden, so we ordered. They said you always get the alfredo, and I didn’t know which one, so I got one with chicken and one without.”
“Zach . . .”
“Sit down,” he said, his voice authoritative.
God. He could tell her what to do all day every day and she would be okay with it.
When Zach told her what to do, she didn’t feel powerless. If she did, she wouldn’t like it. Zach had things taken care of. His orders made her feel safe. Made her feel like she wasn’t carrying every single burden all on her own.
“I’m hungraaaaaay.” Alden growled, and stamped around the kitchen like a tiny, inconvenienced T. rex.
“We ordered you spaghetti and meatballs,” Zach said.
“Oh good!” Alden looked cheerful and much less like a dinosaur.
Daisy decided to busy herself getting plates out of the cabinet.
Zach took the stack from her hands, and their fingertips touched. What did this man even know about being domestic? And why was he so damned good at it?
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Dad got blood everywhere.” Wren sat down at the table and rested her head on her forearms. “And he was swearing and shouting, and Amberly was crying.”
Imagining the scene made Daisy’s stomach wrench tight. “I’m sorry, Wrenny. That must have been really scary.”
“Everything is bad now.” Wren’s voice was small.
This was a stark contrast to when they’d come home wild and sugared up the other night. They’d seemed in high spirits and seemingly unaffected by being shuffled back and forth between two households.
But then, seeing your father after he cut his finger off and having to go to the hospital and being kept hungry would tend to put kids in a low mood.
“Not everything, surely,” Daisy said.
“Amberly has weird snacks like seaweed chips and cuts our cheese into stars with cookie cutters,” Avery said.
“That sounds cute,” Daisy said.
“It’s dumb,” said Avery. “She’s not our mom. And Dad is either always at the gym or playing Xbox, and everything is bad.”
Amberly was trying; Jonathan wasn’t. The finger thing felt pretty karmic. “It was an upsetting day. It’s probably not fair deciding that everything is bad the day someone cuts their finger off.” She took a breath. “Okay, let’s go do bath time while we wait for food. We have, what, forty minutes, Zach?”
“About that,” he responded.
