Cassidy studied him for a long time.She had Bonnie’s directness, but where Bonnie’s directness was warm, Cassidy’s was more clinical.She was running her own analysis, and Gray recognized the process because it was identical to his own.
“You like my mom,” she said.
“I do.”
“A lot?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to stay?”
The question hit him in a place that had no armor.It was the driveway question.Was this the day his father’s truck wouldn’t be there when he looked outside or not?The same question he’d been asking his whole life.
And it had just been turned inside out and aimed back at him.By a nine-year-old girl who needed to know if the man paying attention to her mother was going to disappear the way men in her life had a habit of disappearing.
He leaned forward and looked her in the eyes.He said quietly, firmly, “I’m not going anywhere, Cassidy.”
She held his gaze for five full seconds.Then she nodded once, opened her backpack, and pulled out her observation notebook.She wrote something in it, closed it, and tucked it away.
He didn’t ask what she’d written.He didn’t need to.
“May I have a donut?”she asked.
“There’s a box of assorted kinds on the counter over there.Take whichever one you want.”
She got up, walked into the kitchenette, and came back with a glazed donut.She ate it sitting in the recliner with her book open on her knees, reading as if the conversation had never happened.The verdict had been rendered.Court was adjourned.
She was like Bonnie in another way.Neither of them held grudges.If they had a problem with you, they addressed it directly, worked it out with you, and then let it go.It was clean.Honest.And it put him at ease as few other qualities in other people could.
Gray sat beside her and tried to study to his coursework.But the words blurred.He kept thinking about a five-year-old boy who used to listen for footsteps in a dark hallway, cataloguing the sounds of presence and absence without fully understanding what he was tracking.And his thoughts kept straying to a little girl with a serious face and a notebook, who tracked the same thing he had as a kid ...but with considerably more precision.
Are you going to stay?
He was.God help him, he was.
Bonnie collected Cassidy from the station forty minutes later, having received a text from her daughter that said merely,At the fire station.Don’t worry.Eating a donut.Bonnie had not been aware that her daughter knew where the station was relative to the library, which was three blocks away and on the wrong side of town, but she was learning to stop being surprised by Cassidy’s resourcefulness.
When she got to the fire station, Gray was as cheerful and uncommunicative as Cassidy’s text had been.She looked back and forth between the two of them, and neither one gave any indication that anything was the slightest bit unusual.
She thanked Gray for looking out for Cassidy and feeding her a donut, and she loaded her daughter into the car.
“What were you doing here?”Bonnie asked as they pulled out of the station.
“Talking to Gray.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.”
Bonnie glanced at her daughter in the rearview mirror.Cassidy was reading, her face serene, offering nothing.But Bonnie recognized the expression.Whatever had sent Cassidy to talk with Gray was handled.She’d gotten whatever information she sought from Gray and no further was discussion was necessary.
It was weird, as a single parent, discovering that your child had spoken to another adult in confidence.
It was also weird to realize that her baby girl was growing up.Cassidy was becoming more self-sufficient and independent every day.Before she knew it, Cassidy would graduate high school, head out in pursuit of her own dreams, and likely leave Cobbler Cove.
As a parent, it was her job to help Cassidy along whatever path she chose to take in life.And the first step in that journey was allowing her daughter to speak to Gray privately and not to pry.Bonnie trusted Gray not to give her daughter bad advice.And, if Cassidy had brought a problem to him that genuinely required Bonnie’s knowledge and involvement as her parent, he would have said something back at the station.
Huh.She trusted Gray with her children.There weren’t too many people in the world she could say about.Her parents.The WoWS.And now him.
