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“Do you like board games?”
Dropping his gaze back to his bowl, he frowns slightly, giving Molly’s question a quick shrug. “Conner makes me play them when he visits me at the center but I’m not very good that them.”
“Why?”
Instinctively taking a step forward, I try to insert a buffer between them. “Moll—”
“It’s okay, Grace,” Ryan says, flicking a quick glance in my direction before looking at Molly. “I was a soldier for a really long time, but I had an accident and hurt my head pretty bad so I can’t remember stuff sometimes.”
“Oh.” Molly’s quiet for a second, mulling over what he told her. Finally, she nods. “Is that why you can’t tie your shoes?”
Ryan goes still. The back of his neck goes splotchy and red in an instant. He’s embarrassed. Doesn’t want to talk about his injuries. Not in front of me.
“Yes,” he says, telling her the truth.
“And why you live in a hospital?”
“Yeah.” He laughs a little and nods. “But I don’t live there anymore.”
“Why?”
I think he’s going to tell her he left the hospital because he has a new place to live, but he doesn’t. Again, he tells her the truth. “Because I did something bad. I broke the rules.”
“When I’m bad, my mom puts me in a time-out,” she says, giving him a commiserating sigh. “She says she doesn’t like it any more than I do but I don’t think that’s true because I really don’t like it.”
Sitting back in his seat, Ryan laughs. A real laugh that sets off Molly’s high-pitched giggle.
Watching them, I can’t decide who I’m more jealous of—Ryan for the fact that Molly is so obviously smitten with him and would probably jump out the window if he asked her to or my own daughter for exactly the same reason.
Clearing my throat, I interject myself between them. “Q&A session is over Moll. I need you to go get dressed.”
“It’s still dark outside,” she says, looking at the window for confirmation. “At home, Gran lets me stay in my PJs until we can see the sun.”
Patience, Grace.
You can’t afford to lose your shit.
“This is home and Gran isn’t here,” I remind her, pressing my hands flat on the counter between us so I don’t crank them into fists. “I’ve got a lot to do today and I’m already running late.” It’s a lie. I have plenty of time but I know from experience how easily a schedule can spin out of control when there’s a four-year-old involved.
Slumping back in her seat, I watch her jaw shift into the stubborn angle that almost always signals a fight. “I don’t have to go with you,” Molly informs me in a flat, slightly condescending tone that is 100% my mother. “I can stay here.” She looks at Ryan for confirmation. “Right?”
“Wrong.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it. Doesn’t check to see if it’s okay to butt in. “Your mom is in charge here, Molly—if she says you’re going then you’re going.”
Her little face crumples into a look of utter betrayal. “We were going to play board games today,” she tells him, like they’d made plans. “We—”
“I’m staying here for the next few days.” Now he flicks a quick, nervous glance in my direction before re-focusing on Molly. “Just until my new place is ready, so we have plenty of time to hang out and play board games.”
Pending crisis forgotten, Molly jolts up from her slump, a grin stretching her mouth from ear to ear. “For real?”
“For real.” He nods, returning her grin. “But I don’t hang out with kids who give their mom a hard time, so…”
Molly is out of her seat and streaking down the hall in record time and I can’t help but feel a little resentful over the way he handled her so easily.
A novelty, Grace.
He’s a novelty. This whole place is. It’s like Disneyland. Brand-new cars and shopping sprees. Once the new wears off, your daughter will return to factory settings.
How horrible is it that I actually want her to pitch a fit?