Molly - Sarah Monzon Page 0,40

Hotels lined the opposite side of the road behind us, skinny palms in front. An expanse of grass between ocean and road and in the middle stood a lone tree, tall and thin like a lanky introvert, its white bark shooting in a straight line from ground to sky. Then, at the top, a puff of green leaves moved to the choreography of the breeze.

“The Truffula is really a rare Monterey Cypress you know.” Molly stared up into the swirling leaves.

I leaned close to her and whispered, “Not to the Lorax.”

That amused her. “And do you speak for the trees?”

I opened my mouth to make a smart quip when a quote from the book popped into my mind.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Trees vanished and my thoughts turned inward. Life would get better, wouldn’t it? I had Chloe. And work. Weren’t things fine the way they were?

It’s not. It’s not.

Molly tagged Chloe, then raced around to the other side of the tree. A pang twisted in my chest. Could someone like Molly care an awful lot about Chloe and me? Would that caring make our lives better? Evict the fog once and for all?

11

Molly

“All right, kiddo. Time to brush your teeth.” I led Chloe into the bathroom and helped her squirt kid’s toothpaste onto her Disney Princess toothbrush. She swished the bristles around her mouth a few times before I confiscated Belle and scrubbed Chloe’s molars to get all the sugar bugs out. She spat, rinsed, and dried her face with a towel, then scampered off the step stool that gave her access to the sink and ran into her bedroom.

I followed her at a more sedate pace. Where did children get their boundless energy? A timeless question with a myriad of answers. My personal theory was that they have some sort of mutant power to suck out every dreg of energy from the adults around them for their own personal use. It would explain why so many childcare providers appeared zombie-like while their charges were ready to run a marathon.

Chloe knew the routine and had already shimmied under the flowery duvet covering her day bed. She held a large book in her hands. As I neared, she turned the book toward me. Red with white little flowers and the black outline of a bull in the center. Ferdinand.

I settled on the edge of the mattress beside her. “Don’t you want to pick something else? We’ve read that one every night this week.”

She thrust the book into my hands. “I want this one.”

Ferdinand it was. I’d gotten to the point where Ferdinand’s mother asks him why he doesn’t play with the other little bulls and Ferdinand replies that he likes to sit and smell the flowers when Chloe interrupted me.

“I like the way you read.” She rubbed her hand on my arm.

I looked up from the illustrated page. Chloe stared at me with her big brown eyes, her dark hair splayed across her white pillowcase. “Thank you.”

Her mouth pulled to the side. “Daddy reads like a daddy, but you read like a mommy.”

My heart squeezed in my chest. Chloe was at an age to start noticing things. Like the fact that almost all of her friends at school had both a daddy and a mommy. Did she feel as if something were missing in her life? Usually, when she played dolls, she’d put them in a classroom setting where one was the teacher and the others were students. The few times I’d seen her pretend they were a family, the mom had been conspicuously absent.

After dinner tonight, however, she’d officiated a doll wedding between Ken and Barbie, and a minute later a Chelsea-sized baby appeared. Ken went to work, and Barbie became very motherly with her “daughter.”

No one could fault Ben. Being a single parent must be the toughest job on the planet. Trying to fill two roles simultaneously while also working a job outside the home. He was an excellent father to Chloe. The best a girl could ever ask for.

I reached for Chloe and gathered her onto my lap, pressing her head to my shoulder. I cleared my throat and picked up the story where we’d left off. Chloe snuggled deeper into my chest. Two pages later, her breathing deepened into the sounds of slumber.

I laid her back against her pillow, pulled up the bedspread, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. A tear slid down my