“Where’s Dad?” she asked.
We’d looked at each other and I replied, “He didn’t feel like pancakes.”
Simone looked at us and later she told me, she’d understood right away that my father had left and wasn’t coming back. There had been too many fights, she said, and too little time in-between them for things to go back to normal.
“I like pancakes,” she said and that night, my mom kept making one batch after another. We ate pancakes until we couldn’t stuff another one down our throats. Then we cleaned the kitchen and went to bed.
It was both one of the best and one of the worst nights of my childhood.
The next morning, I made pancakes for Zoë. I smothered them in maple syrup and chocolate sauce, just the way she liked it and then I added a dollop of the truth. I told her Jade was never coming into this house and we’d never be a family.
“I know,” she said with a sigh.
“You do?”
“But it is what she wants.”
I couldn’t believe that Jade would manipulate her daughter in this way, to try and worm her way into our lives.
“Don’t worry, honey, I will tell her myself.”
I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.
But for this slice of the truth, there would be no sugarcoating.
Chapter 21
Nikki
We had barely left the city when Rhonda announced she needed the bathroom.
There were groans from all of us in the van.
“Didn’t you go before we left? What are you, five?!”
Rhonda was Lamar’s new girlfriend and there was some annoyance when he’d announced at the last minute that he was bringing her. Our hiking group chat was full of questions about her fitness level and if she would be able to make the hike. The group was planning to take one of the more complicated trails and nobody wanted to help along a newbie.
These were serious hikers, people who weighed their packs and agonized over every tube of toothpaste and packet of dehydrated peas.
We stopped at a gas station and all of us got out to stretch our legs, buy some snacks.
It was good to see them again. Mike, our leader, was pre-med and very serious, almost fanatical in his approach to hiking. Debbie, his girlfriend, might have looked scrawny and weak, but she’d hiked trails all over the country with Mike. Lamar, tall and broad-shouldered, was a business major who’d started working in Boston a year ago. He had a big laugh and warm personality and was probably the only one in our group who’d be able to get a new member into a hiking trip at the last minute. From the looks of it, Rhonda wasn’t going to be able to keep up, and our pace was monitored to a Swiss-precision watch and maintained rigorously by Mike. Isaac was still studying engineering. He was a year older than me, quiet but with a twinkle in his eye. I’d always liked Isaac.
“Want a protein bar?” Isaac came up to me where I was leaning against the van.
“Thanks.”
I looked at him. “How’s it going, haven’t seen you in a while.”
Isaac smiled. “Working my butt off. Almost failed two subjects last year. How about you?”
I told him about the nanny job and working in the city.
“I thought you’d be long gone by now?” Isaac knew about my plans to work in Colorado.
I shrugged.
“Life, you know?”