Page 80 of A Home for Harmony

“I’m waving the white flag,” he said, taking the bottle from her. “You win.”

She slapped his ass. “I think we are both winning. I’ll stop embarrassing you now. Are you worried about this breakfast with Scarlet? I’m not.”

“I’m not sure what I’m feeling,” he said. “But I appreciate you trying to take my mind off of it.”

“That was my plan,” she said. “Let me help you with breakfast. Anything else you need?”

“Scarlet likes fruit if you want to just grab some berries or anything you want and cut them up.”

“I bet she likes this casserole you’re making too, huh?”

“It’s her favorite,” he mumbled.

“Micah, don’t be embarrassed. I’m going to be dead serious. Look at me.” He turned and looked into her eyes. “You are a dream father. Or maybe one I would have dreamed of. Any teenage girl would be so lucky to know you were in her corner.”

He flushed. “I try.”

“See,” she said. “I don’t think you have to try. I think it comes more naturally to you than you realize.”

He shrugged. “I doubt that. I couldn’t make it work with her mother and no one likes to fail. At least I don’t. My parents are still married. Trinda’s are too. I never thought I’d be in a failed marriage, and when she got pregnant, I was hesitant to get married. She was too. But our parents said it was the right thing to do.”

“Right in their eyes,” she said. “But not in yours or Trinda’s. That’s not failure. If you’d both listened to your heart, you’d know how it would go. But you’re still making it work for your daughter. I don’t know many exes that could live this close nor have holidays together peacefully. At least I’m assuming it is.”

“It is mostly,” he said. “I don’t talk about this much, but we’ve got time. I was the one that threw the towel in and still feel like shit over it.”

She frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means all we did was fight when we saw each other. I couldn’t be who she wanted me to be. I was making her miserable and her being miserable was doing the same to me. I spent more time at work than home and some of it was me volunteering to escape the house.”

“Oh, Micah. I’m so sorry. You carry that around and shouldn’t. It doesn’t appear as if it traumatized Scarlet.”

“She was,” he said. “At least I thought so. She missed me. She wanted to be with me more than her mother. I ended up spending my time home with her and Trinda would find other things to do or go out with friends. I finally sat Trinda down and said we couldn’t do it. She was worried about money and affording things. That’s not the right reason to stay together. It’s the only reason she didn’t bring it up first. I know that.”

“That’s hard,” she said. “My mother wasn’t working when my parents divorced. I should say split. They didn’t really divorce officially for years. My mother cared for us, my father kept the insurance and paid for everything, but they weren’t living together. They were legally separated. They were both dating other people. When my mother got engaged to Jerry, they divorced officially. I didn’t know any of this until years later.”

“Sounds like your father did the right thing too,” he said. “We divorced. Trinda has a job, a decent one, but not what I make. We share custody and there was no child support. It’s not that I didn’t want to pay it, but Scarlet wanted to live with me and that hit Trinda hard.”

“Adding more guilt to you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I gave her the house. She pays the mortgage, but we’d put a lot down on it from my overtime and I just walked away and let her have it. I paid all the childcare costs and whatever Scarlet needs mostly.”

Making it easier for them but probably harder on him.

“You’re an honorable man,” she said.

“With BDE,” he said, smirking.

Harmony laughed. She took that as a sign he was finished talking.

“Yes, you do,” she said. “We’ll change the subject anyway. I’ll follow your lead here with your daughter. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything like we’ve been talking about. I know she’s sixteen, not twenty-six.”

“She’s going to have more questions for you than me,” he said.

“Don’t be so surprised,” she said.

When Scarlet showed up thirty minutes earlier than she was told, she was right. The sixteen-year-old came in saying, “Okay, I’ve had the night to think of things. I need to know it all.”

“No,” Micah said. “I’ve never told you it all and I’m not now. You can ask specific questions, but Harmony doesn’t have to answer anything she doesn’t feel comfortable with.”