“Then you should eat them first.”
“I will.”
Today, her world would change. The truth might reach her slowly, in pieces she could only understand with time, but once we said it aloud, none of us could put it back where it had been.
By the time the food came, Hayden still had not arrived. I told myself there was nothing strange about it. London traffic was awful. The roads were wet. He could be late for a dozen ordinary reasons, and ordinary reasons were easier to hold on to while I sat there waiting for him.
Helena had less patience for that.
She looked at the door, then at me. “Is Uncle Hayden coming?”
“Yes,” I said, though my own eyes moved toward the entrance before I could stop them. “He’s probably just running late.”
She accepted that long enough to dip a fry into ketchup. “How late?”
I laughed softly. “Not very, I hope.”
She chewed for a moment, thinking hard. “Maybe he got lost.”
“In a place he’s been before?”
Her brows pulled together. “Maybe he forgot the way.”
“I don’t think so.”
She did not look convinced.
A few more minutes passed. The café moved on around us, full of voices, clinking glasses, and plates being carried past our table, but my attention kept returning to the door. I tried to make it casual. Helena saw through me at once.
“You looked again,” she said.
“I did not.”
“You did, mommy.”
I smiled and took a sip of my drink, buying myself a second. “Maybe I’m making sure he doesn’t sneak in and steal your fries.”
That made her grin.
And still, Hayden did not come.
In the middle of all that waiting, I became painfully aware of the green sweater I had chosen that morning. It had been five years since I last wore that color for him, long enough for green to stop being a choice and become a memory. And yet, while standing in front of my wardrobe that morning, I had reached for it before I could talk myself out of it. A soft green sweater, fitted jeans, nothing special to anyone else. To me, it was stupidly intimate.
I had wanted to surprise him.
Now I sat there in his favorite color, with my daughter asking every few minutes whether her favorite uncle was coming, and felt exposed in a way that made me angry with myself. I had arrived carrying hope I had no business carrying, and there was nowhere to put it down.
Helena leaned over the table and lowered her voice, serious again. “Mommy.”
“Yes, baby?”
“What if he forgot us?”
The question was so small it went straight through me.
“He didn’t forget us,” I said at once, reaching across the table to touch her hand. “Uncle Hayden would never forget you.”
She studied my face for a moment. Then, because children always found the tenderest place without meaning to, she asked, “And you?”
