Her smile is shy, but sweet. When she looks at me, she doesn’t glance away.
“Me too.” She takes another bite.
We sit, quietly eating, and then she says, “So, do you live in town?”
I shake my head and swallow my bite. “No, I have a property outside town a little ways.”
She perks up. “What’s it like?”
“Too big for one person. Private. Quiet.”
She nods.
“You could see it sometime,” I offer before I think better of it. “You know, to satisfy your curiosity.”
“I am curious,” she admits easily.
“You always were.”
She smiles and that young woman is back—walking the streets of cobblestone with me.
I take another bite of sandwich, swallow and ask the hard question that’s been burning inside me ever since the night at her house—maybe ever since she walked through the bays, showing up here out of the blue. “So, Mia’s dad isn’t in the picture? Or …”
“You want the short-and-sweet story?”
“Is it sweet?”
“Not really.”
“I want whatever version you want to tell me.” I set my sandwich down, leaning back in my chair.
“We were married. We had talked about wanting kids—later. I wanted to go through med school. He wanted to build up our reserves, buy a house, and travel a little. I think he always resented my gap year.”
I’m quiet, not liking where this is going—at all.
“When I found out I was pregnant, his answer was, ‘How?’” She scoffs.
My fingers tighten around my glass of water.
“Anyway,” she says, attempting to affect a breezy air. “There’s a lot more to it. He made a go of it. Stuck around for Mia’s first year. Then, right after her birthday, he asked me for a divorce.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. He knew her a whole year, but in the end, all he could say was, ‘You knew I wasn’t ready.’”
She shakes her head and then she looks at me—really looks. “He’s not a bad man. I know it makes him sound like one. He’s just incapable of being a good father—or a consistent one. He gave up custody, but retains rights to visitation. Rights he exercises every so often.”
She looks like there’s so much more to say. Her face has morphed from happy and easy to tense and far away.
My jaw ticks. “What man would abandon his own child and wife for no good reason—let alone you and Mia?”
Was there another woman? I wonder but don’t ask. If Hallie wants me to know more, she’ll tell me.
She pokes around at her fruit salad, and then she looks up at me. “There wasn’t another woman. People always wonder. There wasn’t. Just ambition and … fear, I guess.”
I feel my blood boil beneath my skin. Hallie sighs and then she’s back, eating her sandwich, setting aside the emotions and weight that temporarily stole her joy.
I run my hands down my thighs and blow out a slow breath. “Life isn’t what we plan it to be. A real man knows that and steps up to whatever cards he’s dealt.” I hold Hallie’s gaze. “Not that you or Mia are a bad hand of cards. That came out all wrong. You’re a winning hand …” I clear my throat. “Anyway. He’s a fool.”
