Soaring (Magdalene #2)(161)

“I know,” I replied.

“Gotta be responsible. That’d make me not be able to be responsible.”

Yes, I knew what he was saying.

“Okay, Mickey. But, just to say, honestly, I don’t think that poster would be on her wall if that actually happened.”

“Right,” he grunted.

“Right,” I repeated.

“Okay, Amy.”

“Let that go and go to sleep, baby.”

He drew in breath, drawing his arms closer around me as he did.

He let the breath go but not me.

“’Night, babe.”

I kissed his chest and replied, “Goodnight, Mickey.”

It took me a lot longer to get droopy because I spent a lot of time hoping in all that was happening with Rhiannon and Aisling that I hadn’t lied and the Donovan family could bounce back.

And be happy.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Luck o’ the Irish

The next day, late morning, I knocked on Ash’s door.

“Yeah?’ she called.

I opened it and stuck my head in, seeing her on her side in her bed, earbuds in, book open in front of her, still in her shapeless PJ’s, thus no shower.

At her dad’s call, she’d come out for breakfast, ate it with us, then went right back in.

“Hey,” I started. “We’re about to go outside to toss around the Frisbee. It’s chilly but it’ll be fun. Wanna join us?”

“Naw,” she replied. “I’m into this book and I’m almost done.”

I looked to the book she was reading and saw this was not a lie.

I looked back to her. “Okay, blossom. But you get done, come and join us if you feel like it.”

“Okay, Amy. If I feel like it.”

She wasn’t coming.

“Right. Hope to see you outside.”

She didn’t reply.

“Enjoy the book,” I bid her.

She nodded, touched her iPhone likely to restart her music playing and looked back down at her book.

Since I wasn’t blind, my eyes again took in her room before I closed the door. But when the door latched, a thought came to me.

My daughter, too, had a pretty little girl room (hers had been peaches and pinks). Starting at eleven, she’d begun begging for an update, and because I was me, but also because we were in the first throes of divorce, by the time she hit twelve, I’d given it to her.

This thought made me move down the hall. I saw Cillian’s door partially open, knocked, didn’t get an answer, so I stuck my head in.

Seeing it for the first time, I learned he’d had a bent toward careening down the highway to the danger zone even prior to seeing Top Gun. I knew this from the motif of airplanes that was in his room.

But it was little kid airplanes for a little boy. They weren’t cool. They were primary colors and cartoony.

His room was also untidy but nowhere near the mess of his sister’s.

I pulled my head out and moved swiftly down the hall to the back room where Mickey was standing alone behind the sectional, an MFD sweatshirt on to go out and play Frisbee, but eyes aimed to the college football game on TV.

“Hey, where’s Cill?” I asked.

He looked to me. “Bathroom. Ash coming?”

I shook my head.

His handsome face turned worried and his eyes drifted to the hall.

I got close. “Before Cill comes back, can I ask something?”

He looked back to me and invited, “Shoot.”

I got closer. “It’ll be asking a lot, honey. And you can say no.”

“Is it about Ash?”

I nodded.

“Then shoot.”

Yes, worried.

But such a good dad.

I nodded again and spoke. “When I went in to talk to her, I noticed she still had her Aisling-as-a-little-girl decoration in her room under all that mess. And I remembered when Olympia hit eleven she started wanting something more grown up. So I just wondered if you might have a teeny-tiny budget,” I lifted my hand to do a thumb and forefinger inch, “that we could use to update her room. Go to Target. Get a new comforter. Maybe a lamp or two. Buy some paint and she and I can paint her walls. Nothing extravagant, just a new look.”

“You think she hates her room?” he asked.

“I think she’s growing up and it might be nice she knows you have a mind to that. But mostly, I just want to see if I can get her excited about something.”

He appeared keen about this idea before that slid out of his features.

“Do it for one kid, babe, gotta do it for both. Can give you the money for Ash but with all that’s goin’ on, not sure I’d wanna push that to doin’ it times two.”

“I agree,” I replied. “But if she wants that and then Cill asks for it, you can tell him he can have it when he hits Ash’s age.”

“Good plan,” he muttered on a nod.

“So, can I suggest that? You can give us a budget.”

He looked to the hall again then to me. “Yeah, Amy. Good idea. Run with it.”

I smiled up at him.

He lifted a hand to wrap it around the back of my neck before he leaned into me and touched my mouth with his.

He moved back an inch and asked, “You gonna get your jacket?”