“Don’t worry. I can make you tea.” She was already unzipping her backpack, removing the miniature tea set she’d packed. “You can pick your baby.”
“Oh, I think I know just which one I’ll choose.”
Aelin threw up her little hands, shaking her head as if he were impossible. “I haven’t even shown you yet!”
Silva opened her mouth to call out, to tell Aelin that Tate was too hurt to be able to play on the floor with her, but he was already gingerly sinking to the ground, only wincing a little.
Five years.Are you family?And now he was home.Of course we are.
She drifted to the corner where her little office set-up lived, sinking into the chair. She didn’t need to hover, and she knew doing so would only hamper what was unfolding in the living room. More time to think of her own dilemma.
Besides, Tate was good with children, had experience with them, even. More experience than she’d had before she became a mother.Silva,I like feral cats, very small children, and very old men, and that’s about it. He’d laughingly admitted that babysitting Cymbeline’s two small children on Saturday mornings was far preferable to being short a hostess at Clover, that he liked the small moths better than the clientele.
There were books on the shelf, she realized. She’d kept her work binders there previously, and in the few months she and Aelin had lived here, the shelves had been for her art supplies. A line of children’s books filled the third shelf from the floor, picture books and faerie tales, a small sack of first readers, all varied in both age and thickness.
The shelf below it held a stack of coloring books, construction paper, fresh boxes of crayons and colored pencils, and, on the bottom shelf, a stuffed frog wearing a tiny crown, perched on a pink pillow.
Silva swiveled the chair to face the window so that her tears would not be noticeable to either of them, as Aelin chattered away, introducing Tate to her dolls and stuffed animals, who were the other guests at the tea party.
He’d made his choice, clearly.
You have to be willing to share her now. Is that something you can do?She didn’t have an answer yet. It would depend entirely on what sort of relationship the two ofthemhad going forward. Tate was reticent and guarded, but he didn’t do things in half measures. If he’d made a choice to be present, to earn the role of father, Silva had no doubt he’d be as single-minded and efficient as he was in the running of the businesses that were once his.
They couldn’t go back to what they were.
She wasn’t that elf anymore, and she’d essentially spent the last five years of her life with her heart closed to all but herdaughter. She liked being independent. He would need to make choices in that regard as well.
He colored with her, sitting on the floor with his legs folded and his spine held straight, never complaining if he was in pain. Silva hoped there were enoughgood drugsleft in that brown bag for after they’d left. They put together a puzzle of woodland animals from the same bookshelf as the crayons, and Silva wondered what else he’d purchased in the last seventy-two hours.Making up for lost time.
“Can I get the princess a snack? Or is it lunchtime?”
“Lunchtime,” Silva confirmed, glancing at her phone. It was an hour that would have been generously considered brunch for most adults, but not for a preschooler.And he even knows that.
“I can make you anything you want, Princess Aelin. The kitchen is open for you, and you’re in luck, the cook is on duty.”
“Can you make winter soup?”
Tate was already at the refrigerator pulling out greens, pausing in confusion at the container of dark red liquid, turning to Silva with a raised eyebrow.
“We brought your soup from home, bunny. Remember? You were going to ask Tate if he wants to have some with you.”
Aelin whipped around, her hands up as if Silva had just suggested something preposterous. “He said he would make lunch!”
“I don’t know what winter soup is,” he mused, leaning over the counter to peer at Aelin questioningly. “Is that soup you eat to make it snow?”
Aelin dropped her head back, utterly exasperated with the two adults in the room. “No! It’s soup from the winter place. The winter lady gave it to me when we went to visit her. It was so good! Then she yelled at me.”
Oh no. Oh no no no. Aelin had never once mentioned anything close to the bowl of stew Silva had been given at the Court of Winter.She wasn’t even born yet!
Tate’s eyes were narrowed, not following the conversational thread, but still trying desperately to both humor and please the tiny elf before him. “What did it look like? Can you remember what was in it? And why in the world would she be yelling at such a wee pixie?”
Aelin gestured at Tate, looking back at Silva with a look of pure disdain, as if to say, “This guy, am I right?”
His composure faltered at her expression, dipping his head as he laughed silently, bending a bit too far forward and then instantly yelping in pain. “Can’t bend down, can’t bend down . . .”
“I wasinMommy’stummy,” Aelin enunciated slowly, as if Tate were the small child. “I don’t know what it looks like! It’s the place where Moonbeam lived. Now he lives with me. The lady gave me a bowl of soup, and then she yelled at me to wake up!”
“. . . Moonbeam.”
