Alistair helped Teddy from the back seat, his gaze raking over my face like he hadn’t seen me for a thousand years.
I cleared my throat, heading for his Land Rover, then paused, staring open-mouthed at the booster seat Teddy was scrambling into. “What’s that?”
Alistair didn’t look up, loading my bag into the boot. “It’s a booster seat. You know, one of those things required by law to use for road safety until a child is twelve years old.”
“I know what a booster seat is,” I said, irritated. “I meant, what’s it doing in your car? Is it for Ava and Emily?”This one looked brand new. It certainly wasn’t the hand-me-down squashed into Daisy’s back seat, with footprints on the fabric, crumbs stuffed beneath the cushion and that mysterious sticky substance that I told myself was Ribena every time I cleaned it.
“No.” He closed the boot with a thump, coming to stand in front of me. “I don’t drive the twins often, and when I do, I borrow Heather’s.”
“So you bought this?” I pointed, watching Teddy strap herself in like she’d done it a thousand times before. “With your own money?”
“Yes,” he said. Gauging my reaction. “Last week. I figured it would be easier to have my own so we didn’t have to keep moving yours back and forth.” I’d expected amusement, an eye roll that he could afford it, but he sounded nervous.
I licked my dry lips. “You needn’t have, it’s hardly a bother to use mine.”
“Yours belongs on a bonfire.”
“I’m being serious, Alistair.” I felt stupid, getting worked up over a car seat. But this was . . . too thoughtful. Too permanent.
My request for time, for him to really think about this life-changing decision, felt smart. Reasonable. But Alistair, the most intelligent person I’d ever met, had apparently taken that as a suggestion to double down.
The music hadn’t stopped.
At this point we’d cycled through Céline Dion’s entire backlist. I had to hand it to her, she had more range than I’d given her credit for.
Last night he’d even slipped a note beneath the connecting door that said,Wouldn’t it be nice to knock this wall down, open this space up?
I’d scoffed then placed it on the kitchen counter, right beside the vase of wilting flowers. Because no matter how scared I was, my fragile heart longed for the permanence he was promising.
I didn’t even care about all the other accusations Cameron had thrown out. Alistair didn’t owe me every tiny detail of his life all at once.
What I did need was for him to be certain about his future here.
Certain about me.
I needed to know we’d reach those truths eventually.
Alistair sighed, like I’d asked him to relay the phonetic alphabet. He was probably an expert on it anyway. “Will it make you feel better that it’s second-hand? I know that you hate the money thing, and I heard you, I get it. I bought this for me, because I’d be honoured if one day you trusted me enough to drive Teddy on my own.” His pinky finger reached out to brush mine, as close as he ever got to me when Teddy was around. “Pick her up from school when you’re working. Take her to football practice on the weekends.”
School. Because he planned to be here in the autumn. “Teddy doesn’t play football.”
“Not yet. Maybe in a few years,” he said, and I started to shake my head. The hope in my chest was threatening to balloon, far too big for my body. He cut me off, his finger now fully clasping mine. “We don’t have to talk about this now, just think about it. Okay?”
His gaze seared into me, saying more in that moment than I was capable of reading. So I nodded, myokaya shadow of a word on my tongue.
We headed in the direction of Kinleith.TheLion Kingsoundtrack had replaced Alistair’s old-man radio. Teddy’s off-key squall almost burst my eardrums throughout “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King”;her giggles when Alistair performed Zazu’s lines in a posh English accent, which sounded suspiciously close to mine, were like drops of stardust.
“How do you know this song?” she demanded.
He glanced at her steadily in the rearview mirror. “Theodora, there’s anglerfish that know the lyrics to this song.”
I had no clue what an anglerfish was. But apparently Teddy did, because the two of them laughed while my heart performed an unsteadythump,thump,thump.
I should probably get that checked out. Visit a cardiologist. A neurologist too, to work on these delusions. Because suddenly I was staring into the future. Every weekend this way. Riding shotgun in Alistair’s car, Teddy singing in the back, suddenly too grown up for her booster seat. Eventually too cool to talk to us at all. She’d wear headphones and stare out the window. Or the microchips kids would have surgically implanted into their ears in the future – who knew what; I wasn’t a scientist – but it didn’t matter, because she was there.
All three of us.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
