Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 61268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
“I’m going to miss her,” Milo huffs and falls into silence. He has his arms tucked behind his head while staring up at the sky. He looks so tiny, almost like a baby again, which I haven’t thought he looked like for years.
My throat clogs up when I think about all the parts Toren missed. There have been so many in four years—so freaking many. When Milo jumps up, never one to be contained or still for long, and goes racing and laughing through the park again, playing tag with an unseen friend from his imagination, I turn to Rose. She’s got a scraggly white brow cocked as she fists out another handful of seed. The birds are now gathered around the bench at least a hundred deep. If I wasn’t used to the cacophony, it might scare me.
“Yeah, Charlotte is moving,” I say quietly. “I’m going to need to find another nanny.” I sigh so hard that the bench shifts beneath us. “That’s not the only thing that happened. Today was straight out of a…a…I don’t know. Some kind of movie where things start dropping out of the sky. It was weird, a supernatural kind of weird. It all started with a bracelet that got mailed to me to be cleaned. It was supposed to be picked up today, and it was…” I drop my voice to a whisper. “By Milo’s dad.”
Rose just keeps scattering seed. She doesn’t act as if she heard, but I know her, and I know she’s a good listener. It’s nice that she doesn’t jump on me right away with a thousand questions. I know it’s why I’m here, or at least why I’m telling her before I even tell my own family and best friend. “I’ve never told him.”
Rose nods. It’s not a subject that’s ever come up between us. She knows I don’t have a wedding ring, but that doesn’t mean anything. I never talk about men, so she knows I’m a single mom even though I’ve never said as much. I’ve never, ever talked about Toren.
“He, uh, well, he found out. There’s no mistaking Milo because he looks just like him. I know it was all engineered by Toren’s grandma. She somehow found out I had a shop, sent the bracelet to me, and got him to pick it up. She’s a hopeless romantic and an even worse meddler. She sticks her thumb into every pie in the known universe. I’m not sure how she has so many thumbs, but maybe she most spontaneously grows them.”
Rose straightens, tucks the birdseed in at her side, and watches all the little birds peck at the ground happily. She smiles, but I’m not sure if it’s about all those thumbs, watching her birds, or maybe both.
“Uh, yeah. So, instead of him having a meltdown right there in the store, I got him to meet me across the street at this restaurant I always wanted to visit. It’s a great place, but I should have known better because now I’m never going to be able to go back. We had a bit of a…truth-telling, I guess, and the whole place heard it. There might even have been tears from both of us. He admitted he was an asshole five years ago, and now, he wants to be a part of Milo’s life. He seemed genuinely sorry. He had it rough with his dad, so I know he wouldn’t abandon Milo or be in and out of his life now that I know he wants this.”
“So you trust him now? And you didn’t before?”
“Before, he said he never wanted kids, along with not wanting me anymore. Toren is quiet, and he never says anything he doesn’t mean or forces himself to mean or believe something, at any rate. I knew what he was doing back then—shutting down so he wouldn’t get hurt because stuff was getting too real. I was living with him, and we were happy. It was probably too much for him. I think the leak started slow, just a little drip of doubt, but it grew and turned into a full-on busted pipe that damaged everything.”
“I see.”
One brown bird hops onto Rose’s foot, but she doesn’t move. She’s wearing granny sort of sandals, those brown soft-looking ones designed for comfort and easy mobility. She has sheer blue hosiery on underneath and the tips of her toes—the darkest blue—peek out at the top of her shoe.
Milo is still careening around the park with his arms spread like an airplane. My son has a great imagination, which he gets from reading. He can’t read much by himself yet, but he will always choose to have a story read to him above anything else.
He gets that from his dad.
Toren always had this great love for books. I love reading, but his passion went beyond just devouring the words. It was like reading was sacred to him in ways I just couldn’t grasp, but I loved that about him. God, I loved everything about him so freaking much.