Molly - Sarah Monzon Page 0,20
faculties, and I had more than patients depending on me.
A bird chirped from the box elder tree that grew in the front yard. Last spring a pair of robins had built a nest in one of the branches, and Chloe had loved watching the mama and papa bird hunt for worms in the front yard in the mornings. Maybe later I could take her to see if they were back again to make a second nest.
I mounted the two concrete steps and paused under the portico of the house, taking a deep breath and exhaling the stress from the hospital. The things that happened within those sanitized walls had no business entering my home. If I had a particularly hard case or lost a patient, well, that wasn’t something I wanted to bring home with me. Chloe would learn how difficult life was without me pulling the blinders of innocence from her eyes at a premature date.
Pushing my lips into a smile, I opened the front door. “Chloe, I’m—” Delicious aromas filled my senses. The distinct pungency of sautéed onions and garlic. The tang of tomatoes. “Something smells amazing.”
My feet halted on the tile of the entryway. Was I in the right house? Had I, in my sleep deprived state, accidentally walked into my neighbor’s house like I owned the place? But no. The latest issue of The American Journal of Medicine sat crookedly on the scarred-oak side table with Paw Patrols stickers on the legs. Chloe had stuck those on last year, and I still hadn’t gotten around to trying to peel them off.
“Daddy!” Chloe jumped from a dining room chair that had been scooted up to the kitchen counter.
I bent at the knees and scooped her up in my arms, breathing in the scent of her. She smelled of strawberry conditioner, glue, and garlic. Dr. Feinburg’s angry voice receded from my mind, as did the pressure of competing against my colleagues to make the best impression on the hospital higher ups. None of that mattered. Not when I held my precious daughter in my arms.
I wiped a streak of red sauce from Chloe’s smooth, chipmunk-like cheeks. “What are you up to, rascal?”
“Miss Molly and I are making dinner. Pasghetti and meatballs.”
I looked past Chloe to Molly in my kitchen. The cabinets were solid oak, sturdy but outdated, the countertop in need of an upgrade. Unlike most buyers, the kitchen hadn’t been what sold me on the house. The credit for that rested solely on the outstanding school district. The kitchen…well, we mostly used the microwave to heat up left-over take-out and the oven to cook chicken nuggets and French fries, much to my mother’s horror. If it wasn’t spanakopita, dolmades, or moussaka, I wasn’t feeding my child right.
There hadn’t been a woman standing, much less cooking, in that kitchen…ever. The picture was so wholesome—Leave It to Beaver familial—that my breath hitched. An ache in my stomach twisted uncomfortably.
As a father, I wanted to give Chloe everything I thought she needed. And a mother…well…what little girl didn’t need a mother? But that was the one thing I couldn’t give her, wasn’t it?
Families all look different. Doesn’t mean she lacks for love. I told myself that, but I wasn’t very convincing.
Chloe stared up at me expectantly, and I realized I hadn’t responded to her announcement. “That’s awesome. I can’t wait to try some.”
Her grinned filled with pride, and she wriggled from my arms. Once her feet touched the ground, she raced back to her chair, climbed up, and stirred a pot on the stove.
Molly lifted the cutting board and slid the contents she’d been chopping into a bowl. She looked up and smiled. A second later her eyebrows scrunched as her gaze took me in.
I glanced down. What had—Oh. Right. I wasn’t wearing the same starched white shirt and thin navy tie as I had been at the hospital. First day, she didn’t know that I showered and changed clothes before coming home. A precaution against bringing home pathogenic bacteria and infecting Chloe with some of the same illnesses the patients were fighting at the hospital.
“You didn’t have to make dinner.” I reached for the bowl in front of her—salad—and placed it on top of the eat-in table.
Her cheeks pinked and her gaze dropped from mine. “It was no big deal.”
To come home from a long day of work to a freshly cooked meal? One completely unexpected? One my daughter had been included in? I considered that a very big