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Mara reaches over to rescue Biddy’s drink before it tips across the table, then catches me looking and smiles as though she knows exactly where my thoughts wandered.
I smile back before dropping my eyes to my plate.
Somewhere between making flower crowns, chasing after the twins, and sharing lunch with people who’d welcomed me without a second thought, I’d started caring what Mara thought of me.
That realization catches me off guard.
I want her to like me.
CHAPTER SIX
Bane
MARCH 15TH
“Biddy, keep your ice cream upright.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
She tilts the cone toward her face instead of away from it, which turns out to be exactly the wrong decision.
The strawberry scoop begins sliding off the side as Sprout trots beside us wearing the kind of betrayed expression that suggests I abandoned him instead of refusing to buy him ice cream.
Babs happily licks chocolate from her cone.
Sprout gets nothing.
He committed theft this morning, and rewarding repeat offenders feels like bad parenting, even if the offender has four legs and soulful eyes.
“Daddy.”
I look down just as the strawberry scoop slips another inch. “Eat.”
“I am.”
“Faster.”
“It won’t—“
The scoop lets go.
It splats across the pavement in a pink mess.
Biddy stares at it with her cone still clutched in both hands, blinking like reality has stopped making sense.
Beside her, Babs leans over to inspect the damage.
“Well…” Biddy looks up hopefully, “that didn’t work.”
Her face folds.
I scrub a hand over my jaw before the crying starts. “Come on. We’ll get another one.”
Babs nods as though she’s expected that outcome all along. “I would’ve caught mine.”
“You also would’ve eaten yours in thirty seconds.”
