Thief (Love Me With Lies #3)(63)

“And then I ate my butter and Doll said it was gonna make me sick …” Doll is what she calls my mother. My mother thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world. I think she’s just relieved to have escaped the normal “Granny” or “Grandma” monikers that would make her feel old.

“You’re a genius,” I say while she’s taking a breath. “What three-year-old speaks like this?”

My mother smiles ruefully. “One who never stops speaking. She gets unfathomable amounts of practice.”

Estella repeats the word “unfathomable” all the way to baggage claim. She gets the giggles when I start chanting it with her, and by the time I pull their luggage from the belt, my mother’s head looks ready to explode.

“You used to do that when you were little,” she says. “Say the same thing over and over until I wanted to scream.”

I kiss my daughter’s forehead. “Who needs a paternity test?” I joke. Which is the absolute wrong thing to say, because my small person starts chanting paternity test all the way through the airport … until we climb into the cab outside and I distract her with a pink bus that’s driving by.

During the cab ride home, Estella wants to know what her bedroom looks like, what color blankets I got for her bed, if I have any toys, if she can have sushi for dinner.

“Sushi?” I repeat. “What about spaghetti or chicken fingers?”

She pulls a face that only Leah could have taught her, and says, “I don’t eat kid food.”

My mother raises her eyebrows. “You’d never need a maternity test,” she says out of the corner of her mouth. I have to stifle my laughter.



After taking them to my flat to drop off their things, we head out to a sushi restaurant where my three-year-old consumes a spicy tuna roll on her own, and then eats two pieces of my lunch. I watch in amazement as she mixes soy and wasabi together and picks up her chopsticks. The waiter brought her a fixed pair, one with the rolled up paper and the rubber band to keep the sticks together, but she politely refused them and then dazzled us with her chubby fingered dexterity. She drinks hot tea out of a porcelain cup, and everyone in the restaurant stops to comment on her hair and ladylike behavior. Leah’s done a good job teaching her manners. She thanks everyone who passes her a compliment with such sincerity; one elderly lady gets teary eyed. She passes out on my shoulder in the cab on the way home. I wanted to take her on the tube, but my mother will have nothing to do with dirty underground trains, so we hail a cab.

“I want to ride the twain, Daddy.” Her face is pressed into my neck and her voice is sleepy.

“Tomorrow,” I tell her. “We’ll send Doll off to visit friends, and we’ll do lots of gross things.”

“All wight,” she sighs, “but Mommy doesn’t like me to do…” and then her voice drops off and she’s asleep. My heart beats and aches and beats and aches.



I spend the next week alone with my daughter. My mother visits friends and relatives, giving us plenty of time to bond and do our own thing. I take her to the zoo and the park and the museum, and upon her request, we eat sushi every day for lunch. I talk her into spaghetti one night for dinner, and she has a meltdown when she drops the noodles on her clothes. She wails, her face turning as red as her hair, until I put her in a bath and feed her the rest of her dinner sitting on the edge of the tub. I don’t know whether to be amused or mortified. When I get her out of the bath, she rubs her eyes, yawns and falls asleep right as I get pajamas on. I’m convinced she’s half angel. The half that isn’t Leah, of course.

We stop by my father’s house one evening. He lives in Cambridge in an impressive farmhouse with stables out back. He carries Estella from stall to stall where he introduces her to the horses. She repeats their names: Sugarcup, Nerphelia, Adonis, Stokey. I watch him charm my daughter and feel grateful that she’s a continent away from him. This is what he does. He gets right down on your level — whoever you are — and shines his attention on you. If you like to travel, he’ll ask where you’ve been, he’ll listen with his eyes narrowed and laugh at all your jokes. If you’re interested in model cars, he will ask your opinion on building them and make plans to have you teach him. He makes you feel like you’re the only person worth having a conversation with, and then he goes a year without having a conversation with you. The disappointment is vast. He will never build that model car with you, he will cancel dinner plans and birthday plans and vacation plans. He will choose work and someone else over you. He will break your charmed, hopeful heart time and time again. But, I’ll let my daughter have today, and I’ll protect her the best I can in the tomorrow. Broken people give broken love. And we are all a little broken. You just have to forgive and sew up the wounds love delivers, and move on.

We go from the stables to the kitchen where he makes a show of making us huge ice cream sundaes, and then squirts whipped cream into Estella’s mouth right from the can. She announces that she can’t wait to tell Mommy about this new treat, and I’m fairly certain my ex-wife will be shooting me nasty emails in the coming weeks. She loves him. Like I did. It’s heartbreaking to watch what kind of dad he could have been had he tried. The last two days of her visit, I feel sick to my stomach. I don’t want her to go. I want to be able to see her every day. In a year she will start pre-K. Then kindergarten and first grade. How will we wing weeklong visits to the UK then? It’ll all work itself out, I tell myself. Even if I have to bribe Leah to move to London.