Page 137 of Even After This
I grin. “Yes.”
He scratches his chin. “Then why do we need four more cans of pink paint?” He looks at Alex, horrified. “Are we painting the entire house pink?”
She lets out a beautiful giggle. “No, Daddy. We need an ashent wall.”
He looks to me, confused.
I close the back of the Jeep. “While I love the thought of a house full of pink rooms on a ranch, what I think Alex is referring to is anaccentwall.”
“Hold that thought and stay there,” he says to me. He helps Alex clip into her car seat and closes the back door. Then he stalks my direction, a mischievous look on his face. When he gets to me, he pulls me in and kisses me. Not too much for public, but something almost too much for public. With his hands around my back, he asks, “What in the world, Meredith? An accent wall?”
I rest my hands on his shoulders and get mock serious with him. “Harlan, I tried.”
“Clearly”—he nods to the trunk and says in an amused voice—“you did not try.”
“You weren’t there,” I say, shaking my head. “You didn’t see how she was looking at me.”
“Oh, I can imagine.”
“Ididtry. She got ahold of the paint samples and found the pink family and started naming off which color everyone’s room was going to be. She had your nephews in hot pink and bubblegum rooms. I thought my idea to take the paint chips and create a piece of art to hang in her room was a brilliant idea.”
“That is brilliant.”
“Right? But then she took it and ran with it, wanting each of her walls and ceiling to be different shades of pink. You should be glad I got her talked down to an accent wall.”
His lips twitch. “But there are four shades of pink in my car.”
I let my forehead fall to his chest and finally admit the one area of defeat. “Stripes.”
His chest moves with his chuckles. “Did you say ‘stripes’?”
I nod against his chest. It’s not a bad place to be. “Pinkalicious, Bashful, Pink Pizzazz, and Pretty-in-Pink will join Bubblicious on the wall in different widths of stripes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
He lifts my chin so I have to look him in the eyes. “You’re amazing.”
“She’s amazing,” I whisper.
The last three weeks have included more and more time with Alex. On special days, we have tea parties and movies. On normal days, we have rides from preschool with singalongs and, at night, discussions about dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. I like the normal days the best. They’re a picture of our lives to come, and they settled in Alex the same way they settled in me once I said yes to Harlan. Peacefully.
Harlan squeezes me. “I’ve gotta get my girls home. We have one week before we need the set finished for the one and only showing of our backyard play. And apparently we now have an accent wall to paint.”
My girls.I hope I never get used to that.
“One more thing,” I add, pulling away strategically before I land the punch line.
“Yeah?” he asks in a skeptical tone, squinting one eye. I deserve this reaction. I’ve been the queen of “one more thing” over the past several weeks.
“There’s been a costume change for you in our play.”
“I already have a prince outfit.”
We had discussed his Hollywood ties and his options for the perfect Alex-requested prince costume. Instead, Harlan bought a T-shirt that said, “Isn’t it obvious? I’m the prince.”
Alex was not pleased. Which is why, my guess is, she cameup with this idea. Give a girl some room to be creative and she comes up with a genius idea.
