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“Why not?” she said again. “Because we don’t always make decisions for ourselves, do we?”

“Don’t we?” Mila asked. “You could’ve fooled me. We’re not all as self-sacrificing as you might think, you know.”

But Ava already knew what she needed to do. Calling a halt to whatever this was between her and Hope was best for everyone. Stop things before they got too serious, before anyone, including Alice, could get more hurt.

She needed to take the job and prepare to leave. It was the best thing for everyone.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Alice tucked her hair behind her ear and concentrated on coloring in her book. Hope kept half an eye on her as she washed up the breakfast things.

“Alright,” Caz said. “I’m off to get in the shower and then it’s a busy day for me up at the hospital. You two have a good day at school.”

She stood up and Hope smiled at her, but Alice just frowned over her coloring book. “What do you say to gran, Al?” Hope prompted.

“Bye, gran,” Alice said dully.

Caz moved to sit down again and hash this out, but Hope shook her head. Caz shrugged and went off up the stairs to get ready for her day. Hope dried her hands on a tea towel and then pulled out a chair to sit opposite her daughter.

“Everything okay, Al?”

“Mmm.” Alice colored in the wing of a dragon bright purple.

“You know, you can tell me if something’s not okay,” Hope said. “Like, if something’s making you sad, or angry, or whatever.”

“Mmm-hmm.” A collection of scales became red.

“You were a bit rude to gran a minute ago,” Hope tried. “We don’t do that, do we? Taking out our feelings on someone else, that’s not really fair.”

“’kay.”

Hope sighed. Okay, Alice had had a melt-down after Ava had left. Not that that was unexpected. She was all of six years old and had already dealt with her father leaving and a move of house. She didn’t do well with upheaval, with things changing. It was, Hope supposed, a natural reaction in a kid with divorced parents. One that unfortunately, she couldn’t do much about.

But they’d talked things through and Hope had done her best to explain to Alice that Ava had a life and a home of her own to go back to. That the plan had never been that Ava should stay. And in the end, she’d thought that Alice had gotten the picture.

She’d been quiet, but that was okay. She might be only six, but she had the right to her own feelings. She had the right to be sad.

Hope had spent most of Sunday trying to cheer her up, putting on DVDs and getting ice cream. And Alice had laughed and talked, but still hadn’t quite been herself. It had been a shock, Hope had told herself. A shock that it would take her a little while to get over.

“Are you almost ready for school?”

Alice said nothing, scrubbing a blue pencil into the page so hard that the paper ripped slightly.

A shock. It shouldn’t have been. After all, Hope had known going into this that Ava would leave eventually. Maybe that had even been a part of the attraction, knowing that things couldn’t get too serious.

So why was she shocked? Why did she feel like something was crumbling away beneath her, like a wave was sweeping her feet out from under her?

That wasn’t how things were supposed to be.

She was angry, she reminded herself. Angry that Ava had just spilled the news like that in front of Alice, angry that Ava could be so careless of a child, so clueless that she’d just up-end Alice’s world without thought.

“I said, are you ready for school?”

Alice grunted and changed her pencil for a new, sharper one.

“Alice Perkins, I asked you a question and I expect an answer,” Hope said sharply.

“Not going.”