Then there was Colorado who had moped and then angsted, and then dealt with Maddie’s birth mother. Apparently, he’d set up a fund for her to go to college, which was before Simon had suggested it might look as if he was buying Maddie from her. That had gone down about as well as a gas cloud heading for a supermassive black hole, hence the moping.
I genuinely didn’t know who to worry about first, but the only calm one in the house was Simon and I aspired to be like him, so I forced down the worries and tried to carry on. Last night I made a list of worries, and today I was determined to work my way through each item.
The list was a long one. Emma likely needed counseling, or support, probably through something like art therapy. Natalie, would need counseling plus a plan for rebuilding the house, and a focus for her future. Every time I mentioned the future to Natalie she began to cry, then Emma got quiet, and I was at a loss for how to show my love for both my girls. Then there was my attraction to Colorado and the compassion he’d shown Maddie’s birth mom, Megan, and through all of it there was Maddie. That was my list and I was approaching today with scientific precision.
Top of my list was Emma, and I found her in the spot she’d claimed for her own, the same room that I thought would make a good study. Simon was there, attaching a rainbow blanket to hooks in the wall.
“Morning,” he said as he fixed the last part and then checked around.
“Simon made me a tent. You can come inside,” Emma announced, and then crawled back under a table draped with material. I smiled at Simon who inclined his head in acknowledgment and then sauntered away. He was good with Emma; actually he was good with Natalie as well. He was patient and caring. I was seeing less of angry Simon, and wondered if that was to do with my sister and niece, or that Colorado wasn’t messing things up quite as Simon expected.
I crawled into the tent, holding Maddie to my neck, and was overwhelmed. Everything a five-year-old princess in the making could want was inside, including dress-up clothes, stuffed toys, books, games… the contents were endless. This was less a tent and more a small cave, and given the screws in the wall I was assuming it was a more permanent thing that Maddie would one day enjoy.
“Knock, knock,” I called, as I balanced toast and jelly on a plate. “Breakfast delivery for Princess Emma!”
“In here, Uncle Joseph,” she called, and poked her head out of a second room split with floaty voile.
“Come and eat and we’ll have a party,” I announced, and propped Maddie up in among the teddy bears, making sure she was secure. Of course she wasn’t sitting up, that wouldn’t happen for a while, but she was cooing and batting at the nearest stuffed toy, a teddy wearing a Raptors top with Colorado’s number. I slipped the bag off my shoulder, pulled out drinks, and settled cross-legged on the thick rug on the wood floor.
Emma sat at the small table on one of the chairs and I winced inwardly at the fact she was already covered in paint even this early. She’d taken to making mud pies, mud pots, mud mugs, and they all needed painting.
“How are you this morning?” I asked cheerfully as she bit into her first toast triangle.
She nodded, and then pretended to offer toast to the purple dragon on the other seat. “When is Momma getting up to play with me?”
That was my girl, cutting to the chase. She was a known quantity in my family equation, in that she was probably the only one to make Natalie smile despite everything.
“She’s coming downstairs today, and I know she wants to go swimming,” I lied.
Colorado had made an emergency decision to have the entire pool fenced so that no small kids could accidentally fall in, hurrying it along because Emma was staying there, and loving every minute of choosing the decorative animal designs that formed part of the fence. Of course, that had been before the Megan reveal, and he’d been on a high then creating a family space for what he called his new family.
My chest tightened at the thought of us being any kind of family alongside Colorado. How was that ever going to work? I was a scientist, and sex was an unknown quantity I’d yet to master, but Colorado was this free spirit who equated sex with breathing. We were so dissimilar it hurt. Anyway, I had a life to get back to, a degree to finish, insurance money to claim, I had to find somewhere to live, and most of all I had my own small family to care for. I sat for a while, fussing over Maddie until she closed her eyes, and eating my own toast and drinking a grown-up coffee from the small flask I’d brought in the bag.
“When do we go home?” Emma asked after her last piece of toast was gone.
“We can’t go back to the same house, you know that, right?”
“Uh huh.” She nodded fiercely. “Because it got all burned up, even the pictures we were doing.”
“It did.”
“I don’t like that.” This wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned going home, but it was the first time she clambered over her toys to sit on my lap and cling to me. Maybe this was the moment she cried,
