I wipe my hands on a towel and try to focus. There are still customers. There is still a business to run. There is still my daughter, who absolutely saw more than I wish she had.
We make it through the last hour with half my brain somewhere else and the other half barely holding everything together. When Henry comes in to cover the late afternoon rush, I use the excuse of “office work” to retreat to the small back room with the crooked desk, counting down minutes until closing time.
By the time we lock the front door and Mark takes off with a wave, it is just me and Maisie again. The bakery is quiet, the equipment is off, and the smell of sugar lingers in the air.
Maisie climbs up on a stool by the counter, swinging her legs. “Daddy?”
“Yeah?” I turn off the last light above the display.
She waits until I look at her fully, which is never a good sign.
“Are you going to marry Charlotte?”
I almost swallow my tongue. “What?”
She shrugs like this is a normal question about snacks. “You kissed her.”
I blink. “I did not kiss her.”
“Yes you did,” she says. “Your faces were close and then they were smushed.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “That is not the definition of kissing.”
She thinks about that. “It looked like kissing.”
I sigh. “Okay. First of all, you cannot just say that kind of thing out loud.”
“Why?”
“Because it is private.”
She tilts her head. “Then why did you do it where my eyes are?”
I stare at her. “You are very difficult sometimes, you know that?”
She smiles. “You tell me that a lot.”
I walk over and lift her down from the stool. “We are going home. You need dinner and I need… quiet.”
“Do you need quiet to think about Charlotte?” she asks.
I nearly walk into the door.
“No,” I lie.
She looks entirely unconvinced.
We grab her backpack and lock up. The evening air is cool as we walk to the truck. Maisie chatters about school projects and a kid named Ethan who insists dinosaurs still live under his bed. Her words fade into the background because my brain keeps replaying the feel of Charlotte’s mouth on mine.
I get Maisie buckled, climb into the driver’s side, and grip the steering wheel like it might help me think straight.
“Daddy?” she says again.
“Hmm?”
“Do you like her?” she asks.
I stare at the windshield for a long beat. “I think she is a good person,” I say carefully.
