Page 11 of Never Too Late

And up until now, barely a peep from the woman.

Fuck.

It was just what I needed, Sophie back in Hopeful and Cindy calling, claiming she wanted to be a mom to Zara. To be in her life.

The horn blaring behind my car jolted me back to the present, and I jumped in my seat, hitting the side of my head on my window full on. “Shit,” I muttered, rubbing the sore spot while slowly going forward to the pick-up spot.

Not even three seconds later, the back door swung open and an excited shriek tore at my eardrums. “Hey Daddy!”

Looking over my right shoulder, I could barely see the top of her head. My girl was still standing outside, not getting in the car, and she started talking like she was sitting right next to me and we had all the time in the world— “Guess what, Daddy?”

I opened my mouth to tell her to get in the car, but she didn’t give me a chance. “Miss Simms chose my drawing for the board that’ll be put up next to the well for Christmas this year. And I got a gold star for my homework today. Miss Simms said I did best of my whole class. And…”

“Zara, baby girl, get in the car and you can tell me all about it on our way home,” I said in a gentle voice. I knew if I didn’t, she would have stayed outside the car, rambling until she said all she had to say or until she lost steam.

And sometimes that took hours.

“Oh, right,” she muttered to herself and looked down as if wondering how she was still outside the car.

“Sweet girl,” I prompted her to get a move on. I watched as she looked up, her gloved hand going to her forehead to push up her wool hat and gave me a toothed smile. Still standing outside and not sliding into the car. “Zara,” I warned, and she giggled.

Fuck!

She was playing me.

I waited until she did her seat belt before I put the car into gear, flashed all four blinkers to the hysteric mom behind me, and went on our way.

The whole time Zara talked a mile a minute. I was again reminded why the fuck I ended up grateful for the hell that was my time with Cindy. Listening to my girl talking about her day, I even managed to forget that Sophie was back in town.

We went home, Zara did her homework while I cooked dinner. She then decided to read me a story that coincidentally was written only in her mind. It made no sense, the character kept changing names and whatnot. It was hard to follow.

And I loved every second of it.

“You just need to talk,” Mrs. McConnell said again as I stood up from the table to clear our plates.

And again, I answered in what I thought was clear.

“No. We don’t have anything to talk about.”

It was a Friday night, a night when Zara usually took out all her dolls and whatnots to get Mrs. McConnell to play with her. It was also almost a month since I told Sophie to leave and she still didn’t. Until now, because Mrs. McConnell came to dinner with news. News that made my gut squeeze uncontrollably and I almost threw up all over the table.

Sophie reached out to the realtor. She also demanded a meeting with the town’s council.

It meant one thing.

She was preparing to leave.

Why that left a sour taste in my mouth, I didn’t know.

Mrs. McConnell huffed but didn’t push. She turned to Zara and cooed, “No dolls tonight, my dear?”

When Zara stayed quiet, I stopped thinking about Sophie leaving and focused on my girl.

She was unusually quiet and played with the food on her plate all through dinner.

It took more than gentle encouragement to get her to eat.

The old lady who became something like my grandmother over the years and she dotted on Zara since the day she was born, kept sending me questioning glances but I was too wrapped up in the Sophie leaving part of the evening that I kept shrugging my shoulders and brushing it off since I didn’t know what was going on. She was fine when I got her home, maybe a little on the quiet side, but we spent the entire afternoon out in the cold running around the woods, so I put it on the fact that she spent herself while being out and when she got into warmer space, the exhaustion hit.