He should let her sleep. She laid her head on his shoulder, and they scooted closer so that they fit. Oh, how good that felt.
Yet sleep didn’t come.
* * *
One step at a time, Alejo reminded himself the next morning, after Wendy and Sam left.
“Can we fly to the island again?” Oriane asked, as always, in Spanish. “I want to look closer at those buffalo. They are so interesting!”
“We can, but first we need to have a talk.”
“Eh?” Oriane said warily.
“It’s about school. Your mother called yesterday, and she said—we both feel,” Alejo amended conscientiously, “that either you agree to try school here in California, or you’ll have to return to—”
“No!” Oriane shouted. “You said I could take my time!”
“We’re coming up on two weeks,” Alejo said. “Much longer and you might get behind, especially dealing with work in another lang—”
“I HATE YOU!” Oriane screamed—in Spanish—turned, and ran. Alejo heard one sob that clawed at his heart, making him feel like the world’s worst supervillain, then the door slammed so hard the windows through the house rattled.
Eve poked her head out of the laundry room. “Problem?”
Alejo turned. “She has to go to school,” he said, trying to keep his voice even.
Eve gave a short nod. “This here is reason forty-seven why I never had kids. Good luck, bucko.” She vanished back into the laundry room.
“Right, Father of the Year,” Alejo muttered. What now?
He squashed the impulse to call Wendy at the bakery and load his disastrous failure onto her. He prowled around the kitchen, scowling. Though Oriane was perfectly safe, he didn’t want to leave her and return to work at the house. He was the adult. He ought to be able to figure this out. Except so far, his ideas had zeroed out on him.
Maybe he could…cook something really good? Only what? It would have to be a miracle food to cause Oriane to at least listen. He knew that Wendy would genuinely love anything he made, but she was not the problem. And he didn’t want to make thisherproblem.
All right. When facing the impossible, it was time to bring out the big guns.
He reached for his phone. Very soon he heard crackling, and Godiva’s parrot squawk of a voice boomed out. He held the phone away from his ear, looked around, then slipped outside as she said, “Alejo! Everything all right?”
“Wendy is great. Me, not so great,” he said as he climbed into his truck.
“Lay it on me.”
He shut himself into the truck, and let it all out.
Godiva listened all the way through without speaking, until he ended his long spew with, “I’m pretty sure I’ve failed as a dad. Ought I to give up and send her back to her mom? She’s learned how to be a shifter now. There’s not a lot more I can teach her about that. At least, not about simurghs.”
“Except she still needs to learn about finding other shifters,” Godiva commented. “But that aside. First thing. Seems to me, from what you describe, Roxane stuck you with the ultimatum.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Either that, or the kid just shuts down her phone when her mom tries an Or Else on her. But if they are texting every day, and you’ve seen no sign of the screaming meemies, then my guess is, you were set up to be the bad guy. Not blaming Roxane! If the kid has a meltdown every time someone tells her something she doesn’t like, can’t blame the mom for wanting to dodge it. Especially a single mom with no backup.”
“And so now she figures it’s my turn to take the heat?” Alejo said. “Okay, that makes sense, but what do I do about it?”
“Kiddo, as you’ve probably figured by now, there is no Parents’ Manual issued when a kid pops into the world. Though there are a zillion books out there that claim to be. Being a parent is something you have to reinvent every day, your entire life. Like, you and me, now.”
“Okay, with you so far, but—”
“—but what to do about it. Right. Well, what most of us do is turn to someone who’s a little farther down the path, whose style seems to be what we’d like to achieve. And you’ve got a pretty good parent model right there in the house with you.”
