Zebb turns back to me, his eyes narrowing.
“I don’t want to overstep.” I lower my gaze, once again feeling like I’m doing the wrong thing.
“Marnie would probably love it.” Zebb faces his daughter again. “Let me check with her.”
Tam squeals and wraps her arms around her father’s neck. “Oh, thank you, Daddy!” My eyes prickle with emotion and I look away.
“But first, we need to get you better.”
“It’s only a fever, Daddy. I’ll be better.” Her nonchalance and positive attitude are a wonder.
Zebb presses a kiss to her forehead and forces her back to the pillow. “Now, time for bed, Tiny Tam.”
“Okay, Big Daddy,” she teases him while slipping under the covers and allowing her father to tuck her in. “When I grow up, I want to be an angel like Eva.”
Her serious tone makes my eyes prickle even more. How innocent children are, to believe they can be anything, including angels one day.
“If you’d like to practice, I could leave you my wings.”
Tam’s mouth falls open. “Won’t it hurt to pull them off?”
I slip my thumbs under the elastic straps and snap them. “Angel secret. Wings are removable when we need to walk around as humans.”
Tam watches me as I remove the wings and wrap the straps around the knob of her closet door. When I look over at her, Zebb is the one staring back at me. His eyes soften from the unfocused daze they’ve contained since leaving the pub.
“No flying though,” I warn Tam. “Not every angel uses her wings to fly.”
Tam empathetically nods. “No flying.”
“Good night, Tam,” I rasp, emotion still clogging my throat.
“Good night, Angel Eva.”
Zebb quickly turns his head back to his daughter, gazes at her for a long minute and then kisses her cheek. “Good night, baby.”
“Night, Daddy.”
Zebb and I leave the room and this time I lead the way down the stairs. I don’t stop in his living room but return to the kitchen. As he’s let his niece leave, I’m going to need an Uber to get home, and it’s time for me to go. Using the location finder on my phone, I allow it to plug in Zebb’s address and then pull up the app to find a car. There is one eleven minutes away.
“You were amazing with her.” Zebb pauses just inside the room as I stand by the oversize kitchen island with four stools on one side and a sink on the other.
Once I’m done with my phone, I look up at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a daughter?”
Zebb sighs and leans against the opening to the room. He crosses his arms and peers down at his feet. “I don’t know.”
The answer is a cop out. He had a reason not to tell me and the only thing I can think of is he didn’t want me to know.
“You were married. It seems like that should have come up as well.”
His head pops upward. “I wasn’t married.” Irritation fills his tone.
I arch my brows, waiting for more of an explanation for everything.
“Mary was a girl from the neighborhood, the one I grew up in. She was a good woman and a family friend. During one off season, I’d been home, and we hooked up.” Zebb sighs and attempts to swipe at his head before remembering the wreath on it. He tugs at the thing and tosses it to the floor. “She got pregnant.”
He slips his hands into his robe pockets. He’s silent a second, staring down at the discarded holiday ornamentation. “I promised her we’d get married. After the season. After the baby was born. She deserved a wedding, not something rushed. But everything went wrong.”
Zebb continues gazing at the floor. His thoughts obviously lost in memory. “The pregnancy was difficult. Mary developed pre-eclampsia and was on bed rest. I couldn’t be here as often as she needed me. I’d put football before everything. And then . . .” His Adam’s apple bobs. “She died in childbirth. Total fluke. How does something like that even happen in 2013? But it did.”