Tyler was all but helpless to follow behind her, although he did pause when he came into view of Cadence, who was watching this with an expression he couldn’t quite read pasted across her face.
Part of this was because he kept forcing himself not to look too closely. Cadence looked heart-wrenchingly beautiful in her beach clothes, simple though they were. A blue and white striped t-shirt. A pair of cuffed denim jeans that he knew she’d had for years and years. And a big, broad-brimmed sun hat that he had bought for her on one long-gone beach excursion when she had lamented forgetting to pack one, fretting that she was going to burn.
There was so much familiarity in her look, and yet there was difference too. Her hair had never been as short as it was now, and though he knew that her experience with getting a perm had started out not so well, whatever she’d done to it now certainly suited her.
But the peace between them felt very fragile, and staring was definitely not on the list of things he should be doing. It was bad enough that he couldn’t tell at all if she meant it when she gave him a little jerk of her head to indicate that he should, in fact, join her and Isabelle for lunch.
“Okay, okay, Izzy,” he said with a laugh as his daughter dug her feet into the sand, trying to bodily drag him forward. “I’m coming. Hold your horses.”
“I don’t have any horses!” she answered, as she always did. Another flicker of happiness shot through him. It just felt so good to fall into routine with his family, even if it was only for a little while.
“Yeah, yeah, clever girl,” he teased, ruffling her hair with his free hand. “Let’s have lunch.”
They all settled in at the table, an air of strange politeness hovering over the space. Isabelle chewed noisily on some carrot sticks, kicking her feet happily where they dangled above the sand.
Tyler took a long, much needed sip of a bottle of Gatorade that he’d been carrying around. He’d drank a few such bottles already from the fortunately robust supply in the coolers that Miss Elsa had directed the parents to unload. The day was hot, and the last thing they needed was for someone to suffer from dehydration. The cold liquid was a balm after the hours in the blazing sun.
“Where’s your lunch, Daddy?” Isabelle asked through a mouthful of carrot.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, please,” he corrected automatically. “And I left it… in my car,” he finished, frowning as he realized it.
Cadence let out a little snort of laughter that she hid hastily behind a hand.
Suddenly, Tyler didn’t mind forgetting his lunch so much, not if it made Cadence laugh.
“Yeah, yeah,” he teased her. “Laugh it up.”
“It’s just…” She bit her lip and he fought the urge to reach out and tug it from between her teeth. “How many times a week do you leave the house only to realize that you left your phone or your keys or your wallet inside?”
He pretended to think. “Well, there are seven days in a week, so… seven.”
She grinned. Gosh, she was so beautiful when she smiled unguarded like that. He’d nearly forgotten, that’s how long it had been since he’d seen it.
“I hope you packed something that’s going to withstand the heat,” she said. “Otherwise you’re going to have a, um,fragrantfew drives coming your way.”
He laughed. “You mean like that time when we were in college that we left the doggy bag of sushi in the car overnight?” She wrinkled her nose and nodded, now fighting off a smile. “No, fortunately today was just a peanut butter sandwich.”
“Oh, that might even… smell kind of nice?” she said, optimistic but still clearly doubtful.
“It’s going to be something,” he agreed, shaking his head.
“Mommy, can I go play with Susie?” Isabelle asked. She was not paying the least bit of attention to her parents’ conversation and that, as well as the teasing, made Tyler feel like this was old times in a sort of bittersweet way.
“Sure, honey.” The words were barely out of Cadence’s mouth before Izzy was gone to frolic in the sand with her friend.
“And just like that, we are old news,” Tyler joked.
“Ah, but this is good news for you,” Cadence said. She pulled a wrapped bundle from the insulated lunch bag at her side. Tyler unwrapped it to find a sandwich… with one bite already taken out of it.
“Izzy already sampled it?” he asked with a chuckle.
“You know it.”
Tyler had been a father for too many years to be bothered by sharing germs with his daughter. He took a bite of the sandwich.
“Mm, peanut butter and banana,” he said.
“The Isabelle Meadows special,” Cadence confirmed. “That’s her second sandwich, by the way—so have at it. She already ate a whole one, so she’s all good.”
