I should have cleared my throat before saying, “Yeah,” as I croaked the word out. Zoe leaped and I had to take a step forward to catch her. She buried her face in my chest. “Will you find my mommy?”
What else was there to say? “Yes.”
My brother gave me the evil eye before coming and patting Zoe’s back. “I’ll see you soon, kiddo.” He kissed the top of her head as Zoe continued to cling onto me.
I shifted so Zoe could wave them goodbye as they got in the SUV that had brought me here.
When the car pulled away, Zoe opened her hand, palm up, revealing a Matchbox car. “Uncle Nate said this is yours.” How had he found it? I used to collect miniature model cars. “He said I could have it. But Mommy says if we find something, we should return it to who it belongs to.”
Jesus. I was a dad. “You can keep it,” I said. “In fact, I hid some others in the house.”
“You did?”
I had, unless Nate had found those, too. “Why don’t we go and find them?”
With her in one arm and my bag in my other hand, I walked up the porch steps. I opened the door and set her down.
“Zoe, are you ready to make cookies?”
The lyrical voice I assumed belonged to Sunshine. Zoe looked up at me. “Go ahead, I’ll be there in a minute,” I said.
She ran into the house as I stood just outside the threshold. There were many reasons I hadn’t come home after Mom’s funeral.
The biggest one was guilt. Mom had called me days before she died, begging me to come home. She hadn’t seen me in a while, she’d said. There had been some big deal I needed to close, and I’d told her soon, probably the following week. As Mom hadn’t been ill or diagnosed with anything, I’d thought there was time. But soon had never come.
Being here made me face the reality that I’d failed Mom. She’d been my greatest champion in life when everyone had looked at my brother as the golden boy. And the one time she’d asked me for something so small, I’d been too busy.
The only thing that got me to step inside was knowing she’d believed in me. She would expect me to be nothing shy of the greatest dad, even when doubts plagued me. I took the step forward.
The chatter in the kitchen caught my attention. Zoe was standing in a chair with her hands in dough at the island that hadn’t been there when I was growing up.
Next to her was a woman who stole my breath. She was sunlight personified. Golden skin and hair with a smile so wide aimed at my daughter, I could feel her warmth from where I stood. Though I could only see a little more than her profile, I dared say she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
Dad walked right in my line of sight. “Don’t even think about, son. She works for me, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Dad and I had a lot of words to say to each other. But he wasn’t the boss of me anymore. The problem was, with Nate gone, now I was Sunshine’s boss. As a lawyer, I knew better than anyone in the house how important boundaries between employer and employee were.
Zoe was my number one priority. That didn’t mean I didn’t have eyes. And everything about Sunshine was unforgettable.
Bonus-Haley
I was having the most amazing dream when the persistent sound of my name threatened to lull me to waking. A hand shook my shoulder and I let my eyelids flutter open.
“Huh?” The room wasn’t familiar, and it took a moment for me to remember where I was.
“We need to go now.”
Agan, I thought. The room was dark, and water sloshed around. That wasn’t surprising, considering we were on a boat. But the water sounded awfully close.
“Haley. We have to go now.”
The urgency in his voice set off alarm bells in my head. I let him drag me off the bed. My feet landed in knee-deep water.
“I can’t stop it from coming in. We need to leave,” he urged.
We were on a boat. I had no idea how and where we would leave, but self-preservation kicked in.
“There’s a storm,” he said before we made it up the short hallway stairs to the deck. The sounds of lightning and thunder made it hard to hear. Agan had a heavy-looking bag over one shoulder. He saw something else and yelled, “Hang on!”
Though I might not have been fully alert, I grabbed at the metal bar he pointed to before turning my head. A wave the size of a building was barreling down on us. I clung to the metal, knowing that my life depended on it as water crashed into me, pulling me toward the sea.