Molly - Sarah Monzon Page 0,38
longer being in Chloe’s or my lives. The sun had only begun to shine and the fog to recede. The sudden brightness may have startled me, but I didn’t want to go back to a shroud of gray either. “I’m not firing you.” I’d said it three times already, but I’d keep saying it until she believed me.
The worry eased from her face. “Ok. Good.”
“Good.” I repeated. One second. Two.
Nope. The question wasn’t going away. It had to be asked. “But I still want to know the reasoning behind your bold honesty.”
“Does truthfulness need a justification?” She returned Chloe’s wave before my daughter sped down the slide.
“What about white lies?” I pressed, even though I was pretty sure of the answer. “To spare someone’s feelings.”
She gave me a wounded look. “I’d never hurt someone’s feelings on purpose.”
All her friends had probably learned never to ask her if an outfit made them look fat.
“But…” Nope, my mind wouldn’t let this go. “But why?”
She smirked at me. “You sound like Chloe with all your whys.”
I leaned forward. “Persistence pays off.”
She watched Chloe race from the slides to the swings. Her chest rose then fell. When she looked back at me, acceptance glistened in her eyes. “My parents.”
Didn’t know what I expected, but it hadn’t been that. “Did they drill the honesty thing into you, or did they lie to you all the time?”
She averted her gaze.
I gripped her elbow. Jostled it a little. “What? I’ve already done my rounds in psych.”
Her eyes rolled, but she smiled. “Neither technically. Unless you count omission a lie.”
I considered that. “I guess it can be at times.”
She chewed on the inside of her bottom lip. “You already know my dad’s in the Navy. Goes without saying that we moved around a lot.”
“Okay…”
“The military would contact him about six months in advance of a PCS.” She flicked her attention to my face and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I forget people not in the military world don’t get all the acronyms. PCS stands for permanent change of station. Anyway, they’d contact Dad about six months out usually and get the process rolling. The first time we moved, Mom and Dad filled me in on the details right away, but I didn’t handle the change very well.”
“What happened?”
Rosy splotches mottled her porcelain cheeks. “I cried for six months straight. They were beside themselves trying to find ways to help me adjust.”
As a father, I wasn’t sure who had most of my sympathy in this story: Molly or her parents. “Relocating can be hard.”
Her head bobbed in agreement. “To save themselves the pre-theatrics, as they called it, they decided they just wouldn’t inform me ahead of time the next time we moved. I came home from school to find two big moving trucks in our driveway and men hauling boxes of our stuff out.”
“That’s...” I couldn’t come up with an accurate word.
She shrugged. “They had their reasons. Everyone does when they lie, right? Even lies of omission. But I’ll never forget the punch-in-the-gut feeling every single time it happened.” Her blue-green eyes met mine, her glasses doing nothing to dilute the power of her gaze. “I never want to be the originator of that feeling by withholding the truth from someone.”
A jolt shot down my spine—the same connection I’d felt with her the day before. If I asked her, would she say she felt it too?
I cleared my throat and took a step back. When Princess Sparkle Cupcake became real, that’s when I’d start dating again. Hadn’t I said that to Drew? I couldn’t allow the attraction I felt for Molly to jeopardize Chloe’s care. That wasn’t something a good father would do. I’d just have to get her out of my head.
Where was a good medical journal when I needed one? Nothing cooled the blood faster than reading about communicable diseases.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned my focus back to our conversation about honesty. There seemed to be holes in the execution part of her ideology. Especially given her desired occupation. “How will your philosophy work when you become a teacher? I mean, there really aren’t that many absolute truths, are there? Even science, which is based on facts and research, is molded by the perspectives of different theories. Not to mention the subject of history in elementary school tends to give students rose-colored glasses to look back through.”
She tapped her chin. “Are you asking if I’ll direct a Thanksgiving play with my students that continues the