“So … I’ll go get the eggs—”
“Two, please.” I shoot him a toothy grin. “I’ll pay you back after I go to the store later.”
“Two eggs and the stud finder.”
I return a sharp nod.
“And you’ll go check on the kids.”
“Yes, I’ll go check on the kids.”
“I checked on them ten minutes ago,” Mr. Hans says.
I glance over my shoulder. “Thanks, but I’ll check on them again anyway.”
“You’re worried I did something to them. Smart girl. You can never be too careful.”
I bite my lower lip, eyes wide. “Okay then. I’m…” I point to the stairs “…going now.”
Nate makes his way to the front door as I head up the stairs. Three steps in, I peek over my shoulder. He’s still at the door, watching me.
“What?” I ask.
He shakes his head, that grin taunting me with everything he’s not saying. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
CHAPTER NINE
Nathaniel
“Do you like Gracelyn?” Morgan asks as we build a sand castle a few days after coffee, old lady pussy conversation, and the out-of-character ass comment on my part.
I peer at her over the top of my sunglasses that have slid partway down my nose. Random conversations with my daughter are my favorite moments of every day. I’ve loved our time traveling together over the past eight years. No topic has ever been unwelcomed.
Jenna’s death.
Religion.
Sex.
Why two men were kissing on the subway in London.
Every gathering of protesters.
Every homeless person we’ve encountered.
We talk about everything.
I help her make sense of her world.
She helps me make sense of mine.
“I like Gracelyn just fine. Why?”
“Because you get a weird smile on your face when you’re with her.”
“I smile when I’m with you.”
She dumps the bucket upside down, but the sand crumbles apart because it’s not wet enough. One of us needs to make a trip down to the water to fill up a bucket.
“The smile you have for me is different.”
“Different how?” I grab the empty water bucket and trudge through the sand to the water.
Morgan follows me. “You smile at me like I’m your daughter. Like you’ve loved me forever. Like … your face has smiled at me a gazillion times.”
I laugh, filling up the bucket. “And I smile at other people differently?”
“Yes. Everyone else gets your friendly smile. It’s okay, nothing special like how you smile at me. But … when you smile at Gracelyn, you go like this first.” Morgan wets her lips and rubs them together. “Then you smile a little like this.” She attempts a weird half smile, but it looks rather scary. “And finally you go big … really big like this.” She shows all of her teeth, and it’s scarier than the distorted half smile.
I know I don’t smile at anyone like that. “Wow!” We take the bucket to our elaborate castle that we’ve been working on for two hours. “I had no idea you were such an expert on smiles.”
She shrugs. “I know more than you think.”
I return a small chuckle while wetting the sand. “I don’t doubt that.”
“If you want Gracelyn to be your girlfriend, I’m okay with it.”
Giving her the hairy eyeball, I pause my motions for a few seconds. “You do realize we are here temporarily. For two more months. Then we’re going home. Gracelyn and Gabe live here. They will stay when we leave.”
“Daaad …” She rolls her eyes. “It could just be for two months. Then you could write each other letters. Maybe you could visit each other. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
I dump sand onto her legs and start to bury them. She giggles.
“Can you act your age? Ten-year-olds do not say things like absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Stop!” She laughs more as I shove as much sand as I can gather over her legs, ruining some of our castle in the process.
“Absence also makes the heart hurt. Missing people hurts. When you go to college, I’ll be a broken old man missing my little girl.”
She submits to having half her body buried in sand because she’s too busy giving me that look—the one where she acts like the parent and treats me like a child. “You won’t miss me as much if you have someone else.”
On a sigh, I sit back, resting my hands in the sand behind me. “Nonsense.”
“Grr!” She makes a growling noise while busting out of the sand. “I’m going to shower. Mr. Hans said his granddaughter is coming tonight and staying for a few days. Finally, another girl!”
I give her my best smile, apparently my well-practiced Morgan smile. “Hose off before you go into the house.”
“Yeah, yeah …” She carries her flip-flops to the side of the house while I gather the buckets and shovels.
I frown as I set everything on the porch. Wet footprints lead into the house. She rinsed off her feet, but she didn’t dry them before going inside to shower.