Something that’s even harder with Chrissy wincing as she slips from the room.
I force my expression to stay neutral as her footsteps fade.
As the front door opens and closes, the lock making a quietsnickas it’s engaged.
Only then do I carry Chloe to the couch and sit down with her in my lap. “She’s not, baby.”
Her face crumples, though she doesn’t dissolve into full tears, not yet.
But it’s close enough.
Close enough that guilt rushes through me with such force my insides churn and…I think I might puke.
“She had to leave?” Chloe whispers.
That doesn’t calm my stomach.
Because I think of Finn walking out of my office with those applications in her hands.
Think of the way she flinched.
Think of the itinerary she wanted to show me…the one I hadn’t found until the next morning when I left for the road trip.
A vacation for three.
Scheduled for after the season was over.
It doesn’t change anything.
And it also changes…everything.
“What do you mean?”
“I…” A breath. “She’s not going to be living here anymore.”
A beat.
Then another.
Olive streaks across the living room and launches herself onto the arm of the couch. Pear follows two seconds later and misses, tumbling sideways and righting herself with deeply offended dignity.
Normally Chloe would laugh.
Today she doesn’t.
Instead, she just nods once, a tiny, broken sort of nod that wrecks me. “At least she said goodbye before she dropped me off at school.”
“She did?”
Another nod. “And she hugged me really tight.”
Christ.
“And she gave me this?—”
I look down, see what Chloe’s pointing at. Her blanket. The beautiful cacophony of pink squares she and Finn have been working on for months.
It’s completely finished.
