“Yes,” I say. “She says she’s very sorry for leaving us for so long. She wants to meet you.”
Amazement crosses Lily’s face, followed by excitement. But then her smile falls and she looks at me anxiously.
“Is that okay?” she asks, biting her lower lip.
My beautiful, perceptive daughter. My smile becomes more genuine.
“It’s okay, whatever you want to do,” I assure her.
Lily looks at me, then at Georgia. She draws a deep breath.
“I…I want to see mom,” she says.
“Then I’ll make it happen,” I promise.
Lily scoops up the last bite of her pancakes, deep in thought. I pull out my phone and, despite not wanting to, tug the letter that I left on the table last night (Georgia has cleared up the rest of the table, thankfully, likely before Lily got home and saw the mess her stupid father got into last night) toward me, and type in the number Polly gave me. Then I send a quick message.
“Lily wants to meet you. Choose a day and time. A weekend, if possible.”
My phone buzzes with a message back almost immediately.
“Next Saturday at 2? And, if you’re free, can you and I talk tomorrow at 1?”
Tomorrow, which is a Monday, and Lily will be at school. That doesn’t give me much time to prepare. But then I glance at Lily and I sigh. I really should meet with Polly before she takes my daughter for a day.
“Fine.”
She doesn’t reply. She probably knows that would be pushing her luck. I put my phone down, ignoring the other message I can see waiting there for now.
“She’s coming next weekend, on Saturday,” I say. “Is that okay?”
“Saturday?” Lily asks. A brilliant smile crosses her face and she shoots out of her chair to throw her arms around me. “Thanks, Dad!”
Then she runs off. This is all for Lily, I remind myself. I can do this for Lily. I glance at Georgia.
“She’s coming here to talk to me tomorrow, too,” I murmur, and Georgia gasps.
“Tomorrow is awfully soon,” Georgia says worriedly.
“Better than putting it off until next weekend, and then stressing about it all week, I guess,” I say, shrugging. “This way, I only have one sleepless night before she arrives. Also…I think we need to clear the air a little before Polly meets Lily.”
“True,” Georgia says, grimacing. “Not that it’s really fair either way.”
“Not really,” I murmur.
I’m not ready to see Polly again. I already know it. Part of me has hoped, for years, that she would show up and give me some answers. But now that she’s actually coming to see us? Yeah, I’m not ready for it.
I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for it, though, so I’ll just have to do what I can.
“I hope she leaves her new husband at home,” Georgia comments. “It would be disgusting if she brought him along.”
Crap, I hadn’t even thought of that possibility.
“You don’t think she will, do you?” I ask.
The last thing I need right now is to see the man she married after she left me. And if she’s been together with him for three years, then she stayed married to him far longer than she was married to me.
“I doubt even she would have the nerve,” Georgia assures me. “Besides…it’s been ten years. People change. I guess we can give her the benefit of the doubt.”