“I babysat you once,” Shiloh said. “Do you remember that?”
Angel nodded.
“You still have incredible blond hair,” Shiloh said.
“Thanks.”
Cary turned to Shiloh. “Where are you going to get ice cream?”
“We were gonna walk up to Kone Korner.”
He looked at Angel. “Do you want me to take the kids?”
She seemed tense. Cary shouldn’t have put her on the spot like that. It was hard to say no in front of them.
“Or you could come,” he said.
Angel still didn’t smile. “You can take them.” She looked at the kids. All three of them were staring at her. Three pairs of yellow-brown eyes.They scrambled up. “Bailey, you hold Rex’s hand crossing Thirtieth Street.”
“We’ll walk down to cross at the light,” Shiloh said.
He’d never once seen Shiloh walk down to the light.
“Go get your shoes,” Angel said to the kids.
It was about eight or nine blocks to Kone Korner. Cary ended up carrying Rex across the street. He was a jumpy kid. He made Cary nervous.
Even though Cary and Shiloh had never walked down to the crosswalk before, he still got walloped with déjà vu crossing Thirtieth Street.
How many times had they run across this street together? Too many times to remember in any detail. So many times that the memories were like a wall slamming into him.
He bought all the kids ice cream cones. He let them all get dip. Cary was paying for everything lately. He’d never been a single man with a Navy salary—he’d always had dependents. There was always something. Always someone.
He couldn’t touch Shiloh just now the way he wanted to. But she leaned against him while they were waiting for their cones. “Sorry I took you off task,” she said.
“I’d probably still be stuck in that stairwell—Angel never would have rescued me.”
Cary wanted to start walking back to the house right away, but Shiloh said the kids would drop their ice cream, and she was probably right.
The kids took up all the spaces at the single picnic table in the parking lot. Shiloh and Cary stood behind them, watching each other. She was eating a cherry-dipped cone. He wanted to propose to her again. He wanted to walk straight downtown and sleep on the courthouse steps and marry her at eight o’clock Monday morning.
They finished their ice cream and walked past Shiloh’s house first. Cary promised he’d be over later for dinner. Then he walked back to his house with Angel’s kids. He carried Rex on his back—Cary didn’t trust him not to run into traffic.
When they walked into the house, Angel took one look at Cary and stomped into the kitchen.
He let Rex down and followed her. Almost everything in the kitchen was already packed up or gone. “Are you upset that I took your kids to Kone Korner?”
Angel wheeled on him. She had her hands on her hips. She looked like her mom for a minute, even though they didn’t resemble each other. “I’m not yourniece,Cary!”
Cary flinched. He found himself turning toward the door, like his mom might hear, even though she hadn’t been in the house for months. “What?”
“Don’t you dare lie to me right now!”
“I’m not going to lie to you—I just...” He looked at the door again, then back at Angel. “I didn’t know that youknew...”
“I’m not amoron!”
“Okay.” Cary had one hand on his hip. He rubbed his forehead. “Sorry. I don’t know how to navigate this—it’s not something anybody ever talks about.”
