She leans over my workspace, her waist brushing against my forearm, and does the first step for me. “This isn’t rocket science,” she teases. The sweet, lemony scent of her hair fills my senses, distracting me all over again. “Now, pull that side over and fold it in half.” She lifts her hands, waiting for me to follow her instructions. I try to mimic her movements, and I guess I do it right because she cheers, “Good job! Almost as good as Avery and Eloise.”
The girls burst out laughing and clap their hands, sending puffs of flour everywhere. Millie smiles and bumps her hip into mine. “Keep at it. You’ve got to do that, like, fifty more times.”
I try to get in a groove kneading the dough, while Millie isworking with skilled confidence next to me, but I’m not getting as much done as I should be. Our arms bump against each other, and she leans in front of me to guide Eloise on my other side. A light dusting of flour covers her hair, and she keeps swaying her hips and humming along to the music.
It’s all so distracting, and I’m fighting as hard as I can not to notice.
But it seems like a lost cause.
Once the dough is rising and I’ve cleaned the kitchen from our flour bombing, I lean back on the counter, observing the girls on either side of Millie at the kitchen island.
“My favorite princess is Elsa,” Eloise announces, unsurprisingly. She’s been obsessed since the first time she watchedFrozen.
“Ooh, I’ve been loving ‘Into the Unknown’ lately.” Millie nods. “Lena and I like to dance to it.”
Eloise says, “Alexa, play ‘Into the Unknown,’” and immediately jumps from her stool. Millie and Avery turn around in their chairs to face Eloise as she waits through the piano introduction and the siren call before putting her hand to her ear.
Her little voice echoes around the kitchen as she sings along to the first line with a dramatic flair. When the beat hits, she stomps her foot in sync with it and continues through the first verse, twirling with her arms flying in every direction.
As the chorus starts, Millie surprises me by dropping from her stool and joining Eloise. They both spread their arms wide and throw their heads back, belting out the lyrics.
They light up the whole damn house in a matter of seconds. The music rings through the air like a call to action, willing me to give this critical moment my full attention.
Millie and El spin in circles while they sing, and I’m breathlessly fascinated. Here is a woman I barely know, dancing around my kitchen with my niece, completely unembarrassed.
They hold hands and sing right in each other’s faces like they’re starring in their own Broadway show.
The crowd would be going wild for their enthusiasm.
When the last chorus begins, Millie reaches for Avery, and my heart skips when Avery accepts her hand with a timid smile. She steps up beside Millie and watches her for a few beats before her quiet voice joins theirs. Her movements are shy, but she beams up at Millie, trying to copy her dance through the rest of the song.
My chest tightens, as though someone has taken hold of it andsqueezed.Something about watching them together is so... right that it leaves me breathless.
The song ends too soon, and an ounce of sadness trickles through me. I could’ve watched the three of them for hours.
Little does Millie know, I’ve memorized every word of that song—not that she would ever catch me singing it. Our kitchen sing-alongs are a secret between me and the girls.
“Uncle Finn loves that song,” El announces as she crashes back into her stool. “He always sings it with us.”
Well, fuck. That lasted five seconds. Little snitch.
“Does he, now?” Millie looks like a wolf on the scent of her next meal as she slowly turns my way. “We could’ve used another dancer.”
I snort. “Never gonna happen.”
“We’ll see about that. I have some potent powers of persuasion,” she boasts, and the sultry tone of her voice sends a hot thrill up my spine.
I’m failing so fucking badly at keeping her in the coworker column.
My eyes suffer from a disorder that makes them constantly follow her. My mouth is inflicted with something similar that forces me to grin every time she does. And now my brain is affected bythe raspy tone of her voice, producing forbidden images of other places she could use it.
I hastily turn back to the sink, looking for something to distract me from the intimacy and the smiling and the dancing and the teasing.
Women have been the furthest thing from my mind since the girls moved in. When Clara started getting sick, I had been with a woman named Angela for about six months. We had just started talking about moving in together when Clara needed more help with the girls. While I was picking up Ave and El from school and visiting my sister in the hospital, Angela was angry that I wasn’t spending that time with her.
“You have too much baggage,” she’d said.
As though my perfect nieces, who were going through the biggest devastation of their lives, were extra bags I was going to carry around for eternity.
