Page 33 of Written with You (The Regret Duet 2)
I ached for them.
For both of them.
But most of all, I ached for…
“Daddy?” Rosalee called, trotting toward me.
“Right here, sweet girl.”
She snagged her towel off the chair beside me and then held it out to me in a silent order. I wrapped her like a burrito, only her wrinkly little toes sticking out, and then settled her in my lap.
Her bright, green eyes peered up at me as she asked, “Is Hadley coming over today?”
I flinched. With the ink drying on the paperwork, Hadley would never be coming over again. I pretended like that didn’t feel like a punch to the gut.
I needed to tell her. I needed to find words and break her heart—quick like a Band-Aid.
But she was four. She shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of bullshit. Her only concern should be rainbows and butterflies and how she was going to afford her llama farm one day.
That wasn’t her life though. That wasn’t any of our lives.
And it never would be.
I could give it to her easy. Offer her the bare minimum of facts and ease her into the cold, hard truth as she got older. Just my luck, the first of the five Ws was who.
“No, baby. She isn’t coming over anymore. Not today. Not ever again.”
“What?” she shrieked, fighting out of her towel. “Why not? Is she still sick? We should take her some soup. We should take her some of Ale’s soup. Hers is better than yours.”
Alejandra also had better parenting instincts than I did, because I now had to explain that Hadley had never actually been sick.
“She’s not sick.” I shifted her in my lap, her wet bottom soaking through the towel to my shorts. Okay. I’d started; now, I just had to keep going.
“Is Hadley dead?”
My back shot straight. “What? No!” Well, technically, yes. But… “Why would you ask that?”
“Because Jacob’s grandma got sick for a really long time and then she died. He said they planted her in the ground like a seed.” Her red brows furrowed. “Is Hadley going to be a flower?”
I made a mental note to bribe Jacob’s father to take a job out of the country before once again gathering my nerve. “No. She’s not dead. As far as I know, she’s at her house right now, painting pictures or doing whatever she does. But we still can’t see her. I need to explain to you a few things about that and I need you to really listen because it might be hard for you to understand, okay?”
“Sure,” she chirped, already wiggling in my lap.
I had about three minutes before she got bored of talking to me. I had to make them count.
Dread pooled in my stomach. Once I told her, there was no going back. No pretending. No ignoring. No figuring out how to build a time machine. Nothing. Once this clusterfuck hit her ears, it couldn’t be unsaid.
Even if there was a part of me that would always wish it could be changed.
“The lady who comes to teach you art, her name isn’t really Hadley. Her name is Willow and she’s your mommy’s sister.”
A slow smile split her face. “I have a mommy?”
My stomach wrenched. “You had a mommy, yes. Her name was Hadley.”
“Hadley is my mommy!” she shrieked.
Technically, the answer was yes, but she wasn’t talking about the real Hadley.
“No,” I stated firmly. “Her name was Hadley, but she died, kind of like Jacob’s grandma.”
Her smile fell so fast that I could almost hear the crash.
“But I’m sure she loved you and was sad that she didn’t get to meet you.” I wasn’t sure if that was true or not. But it seemed like the right thing to say at the time.
She stared at me, almost emotionless. I hadn’t expected her to crumble at this news. For kids, missing something they never had was a hard concept. I had a feeling losing her beloved friend and art teacher was when the emotions were going to come into play.
“So, the thing is, Willow, the lady who was teaching you art, she lied to us. And it was a bad lie. So, we can’t see her anymore.”
I waited for the fallout. Braced for the tears when her mind finally wrapped around my words.
Instead she gasped, full-on soap opera mode. “Hadley knew my mommy?”
“Yes. But remember, her name is actually Willow. They were sisters. Twins, actually.”
Another gasp. “Twins like Molly and Gabby?”
I nodded.
Gasping wasn’t enough that time. She palmed either side of my face, squishing my cheeks together as she often did when she got excited, and then yelled, “My mommy looks like Hadley!”
I pried her hands away. “Rosie, baby, listen for a second. Her name is Willow.” Why did I have to keep saying her name? It felt like a rusty blade from the past each and every time. But if I was being honest with myself, it was a rusty blade from the present too. I missed her.
