No Perfect Hero(70)

I wince. “Sorry if she woke you.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. I’d been up for half an hour already. We Fords are born early risers.”

I bite back a laugh so I don't wake Tara. As I look at my niece sleeping snugly on the couch in her little pajama set with her hair pulled down from the pigtails, I can’t help how my heart goes soft.

She doesn’t even stir as a wobbly, still quite catnip-high Mozart scrambles up onto the couch and snuggles against her. His purr says it all.

I want to protect her from everything. My lips twist, wondering how the hard 'talks' Marie and John are having in Maui are going.

Whatever happens with them, she has to know she'll always have a family. To give her the shelter I never had as a little girl, and that my sister didn’t have either.

I know Marie wants to keep Tara safe just as bad as I do, or my niece wouldn’t be with me right now.

What Tara doesn’t know is that this Hawaii trip really is her parents' last-ditch effort to save their marriage. John may be a good guy, and Marie’s my sister and I love her...but sometimes two people just don’t work.

No matter how much they love each other or their daughter. They’ve been trying so hard to hide it from Tara, but I wonder if it’s why Tara tries to be so bright.

She knows. Kids always do.

She knows, but she’s trying so hard to make her family happy anyway.

I swallow the lump in my throat and settle down on the couch next to her, gently brushing her hair back.

“Thank you, Wilma,” I murmur. “Tara really adores you, you know. Every day she always wants to show me new sketches she draws of your flowers. And the new types of crochet stitches you taught her? I think she's died and gone to heaven sometimes.”

“Oh, I adore her too,” Ms. Wilma answers with the brightest, warmest smile that makes me miss my mother, miss someone who would smile at me that way. “It’s good to have little voices and little laughter around the house again.”

At that, she throws a pointed look at Warren. He coughs in the back of his throat, ducking his head and suddenly focusing very, very intently on the skillet and the spatula in his hand.

I cover my mouth with my hand to hold back a giggle. This looks like a familiar exchange, but it warms me so much to be included.

It’s only now that I realize I’m not used to the feeling of a nuclear family, these people who wait up for you to come home and make breakfast for you and look after your niece when you’re at work.

The Fords aren’t my family. Not really. I’m not even sure if, after one night and an uncertain promise, I can even call him my lover.

But they make me feel at home.

They make me realize, wherever I start over, I know what I want out of life.

This feeling. This carefree, wonderful feeling, like my art isn’t an afterthought and my job isn’t a dull time sink, and the people around me aren’t just placeholders in what my life is supposed to look like.

As chaotic as this is, as crazy, as completely accidental, I could see a life that looks something like this.

The kind of family I never had. But the kind I want with a husband and children and room for my art.

A family of people who support each other, who reach for each other, instead of hunkering back behind their defenses, leaving everyone to fend for themselves.

It’s not something I’d ever thought of before. It’s not something I even thought I knew how to create, but now?

I want to try.

And I know I can.

I realize I’m watching Warren as these thoughts circle through my head. He glances up from the stove, catching my eye with an amused head tilt. I twitch, jerking my gaze away and coughing quietly into my hand, face hot.

Whatever I’m thinking about is for later. For Chicago.

This, right now, is like a practice run.

A trial without an expiration date.

That’s all it is.

Sure.

When I look up again, Ms. Wilma is watching, her eyes gentle, her smile warm and knowing, as if she’s picked up on my thoughts.

I can’t hold her gaze, and I look away, tucking my hair back and pulling up the plunging neckline of my jersey, suddenly feeling too exposed in this tiny skirt with my cleavage hanging all out.

Ms. Wilma chuckles, leaning over to pat my knee, then straightens and turns toward the door.

“I’ll be off,” she says quietly. “Should count out the register and check today’s arrivals on that ghastly Kayak site Flynn insists I use. Do come up to the house for dinner some time, though, Haley dear. I promise my cooking is far less…coarse than my grandson’s.”

“Hey!” Warren protests, then darts a guilty look at Tara and lowers his voice. “I’ve been cooking for myself for years.”

“Yes,” Ms. Wilma says dryly, folding her hands primly, “and that puts you ahead of ninety percent of the male species. But it simply doesn’t change the fact that you cook like a soldier and you always have.”

“I am a soldier,” Warren retorts.

“Are you?” Ms. Wilma asks, quiet and pointed and suddenly so serious.

Warren quiets, his motions subdued.

He jerks his gaze to look out the window. “Don’t,” he murmurs. “Not here, Grandma. Not now. You just—”

“Know my grandson?” she finishes for him. “Yes, I do.”