Page 66 of One for the Road
She brushed her fingers over the dragon on the front. “I have one like this at my dad’s house, but I haven’t built it yet. I don’t think he realised it’s for big kids.”
“Let’s look at the instructions. Maybe we can figure it out together.” She shook out the contents, and I laid the paper out on the grass, arranging the pieces into piles. “I like organising them into size groups first, then I can see exactly what I’m working with.”
She didn’t reply, just watched me, a sad little divot etched between her brows, and I thought,To hell with it. If I wasinvolving myself, I might as well commit. “Does your daddy play Lego with you?”
A little shrug. “He used to. Now he’s too busy with Annie, the lady that lives with him.” As a reasonable adult, this was probably the place I should reassure her, but I also couldn’t bring myself to lie to the kid. Cameron had found something new and shiny to fill his time with, and his family were paying the price. So I said nothing.
“We were supposed to hang out today,” she said, the smallest sniffle in her voice. “Mummy promised he would take me to the beach, but then she said he had an emergency.”
“That must have felt . . . really big inside when you found out.” I clicked two pieces together, holding them out for her to see how the pieces slid together. Her slightly chubby fingers fumbled a little as she tried, but she got the hang of it on her next go.
“My stomach felt all twisty, like it does right before I get sick.”
“Did you tell your mummy how you felt?”
She shook her head, sitting quietly for a few minutes, connecting the pieces that would become the dragon’s feet to the baseplate.
“I shouted at her when we got home.” She admitted it like a shameful secret, scrubbing at her face as a slow tear crested her cheek. I almost called for Isla at the sight of it.
I wasn’t great at offering comfort. Callum would have been far more suited to this.
Even Mal. He was great with kids.
A decline in empathy was one of the drawbacks of being a medical professional. It didn’t happen to everyone, but if it did, it usually happened early, during medical training as students transitioned to a clinical setting and were taught to see patients as a series of scans and body parts. It wasn’t intentional or even malicious, but preparation for the emotional toll the career would take. If a doctor broke down over every lost patient, we wouldn’t make it through the day.
But watching Teddy trying to hide the quiver in her bottom lip felt like a fist around my heart.
Something told me getting Isla would be the wrong move. That maybe she was admitting this to me because I was an adult in her life who didn’t hold any permanence.
A safe space, if only for a few minutes.
It worked that way in the surgery too. Perhaps it was the doctor–patient confidentiality. We were a place for people to bring their sickness and injuries but also take a weight off their mind.
“I didn’t mean to.” She shook her head. “I felt so . . . so sad. I just want it to be like it was before, when we all lived together.”
Fuck. What could I say to that?
I shifted an ich closer, hands hanging between my knees. “Can I tell you a secret?” She nodded, eyes almost sparkling with her tears. Her face was so like Isla’s, it made me want to give her nothing but the truth. “When I moved back to Kinleith, I was sad too.” I admitted what I’d admitted to no one. “I’d had to leave a job I worked really hard for, and then my dad died and I was even sadder. I wanted things to go back to the way they were before too.”
“What did you do?” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.
“I got really moody and said some not-nice things that got printed in the newspaper.”
Her lips stretched into a tiny smile, and the knot in my chest eased a fraction. “Oh, yeah. Mummy stuck it onto the connecting door.”
I laughed, pretending I hadn’t seen it adhered to the wood with glittery stickers just this morning. “Is that so?”
“She drew little devil horns around your name.”
I’d noticed that too. Isla might project sunshine and blushing cheeks to the folk of this village, but she also had a malicious streak that intrigued the hell out of me. “Even adults do things we aren’t proud of, and most of us don’t admit when we’re wrong. It’s okay to be mad and sad and every emotion in between. Emotionally, you’re miles ahead of me, kid.”
“Was your dad a bad daddy too? Is that why you’re grumpy all the time?”
My laugh was bigger this time. Hoarse, like it had been wrenched from my chest kicking and screaming.Fuck, this kid really had no filter.
“He wasn’t really good or bad. Sometimes he was so busy he didn’t feel likemydad at all, because he put everything else before us.” I stacked the next piece. “So, I tried really hard to make him proud. So that he’d notice me.” My throat narrowed, and I handed the blocks to her.
“Did you do it?”
