knew he was leaving.
Yeah, I was probably the worst mother in the world. But I wasn’t going to apologize. A few months ago, I would have, I would have turned my back on what I wanted, but I was different now.
Matt Woods stepping into my life had changed me.
“I know you’re mad,” I said to my daughter as if I could see her. I got down on my knees and looked under the bed. At first, I saw nothing but dust bunnies the size of my head then, at the foot, my daughter’s defiant blue eyes.
“Katie.” I sighed, holding out my hands, reaching for my daughter’s outstretched palm.
“I’ve been here for like, three hours!” Katie yelled. “I’m stuck.”
“You should have yelled,” I said, not giving her all the sympathy she was angling for and I pulled Katie from where she was wedged on her side under the bed, her legs curled up to her pointy little chin.
“My legs don’t work right,” Katie muttered, sticking her face into my neck. I fell back on my butt and cradled my daughter close.
“They’re asleep,” I said. “Give them a few minutes.” I pulled dust bunnies and cobwebs from Katie’s hair and brushed the worst of the mess off the second set of pajamas from Margot’s cruise. Ruined, of course.
“I’m really sorry about today,” I murmured into the pink shell of Katie’s ear.
Katie pulled back, her eyes accusing me of everything short of a third world war. “You just left.”
“I thought Margot was watching you.”
“You left me here with—” Katie’s eyes flickered over my shoulder “—that guy.”
I felt Matt over my shoulder, a warm solid weight like a hand against my skin. I wanted to laugh at the thought of Matt as just that guy. Somehow, someway, in the past few weeks, he’d become far more than that.
What he was, however, I had no clue.
“Matt is not that guy,” I said, trying to be patient.
“Then who is he?” Katie asked. She shook, her eyes direct, her hands in fists, and I wondered if this was more than jealousy over the amount of time and attention I’d been giving to Matt.
“He’s a friend,” I said. I mean, weak sauce but I was floundering here.
“Is he my dad?”
14
SAVANNAH
I stared blankly at Katie, my head trying to catch up with what just happened.
“Your dad?” I asked. “Why in the world would you think that?”
Katie’s little chin came up. “That day outside the library you and Margot were talking about my dad and then Matt said you guys were talking about him. And then he made you cry and you wouldn’t answer me when I asked if you had sex with him.”
All of that was true. But it was like adding apples and oranges and getting elephants.
“Honey,” I breathed. “I had no idea you were thinking this.”
“You never tell me anything,” Katie said.
“I thought I was protecting you,” I said. The same way Carter always tried to protect me from the uglier aspects of Tyler or our mother.
I felt awful that I’d never seen the pain not talking about Eric was causing Katie. Other single mothers probably didn’t have this problem. They probably told their kids the truth from the beginning and—rubbing salt in my guilt—I imagined they were able to do it without calling the absent father a bastard.
“Marybeth, at school,” Katie said, “she doesn’t have a dad but her mom told her he lives in New Orleans with a hooker.”
I swallowed my laughter—clearly there was a spectrum of bad single parenting.
“But she gets to go visit him,” Katie continued, getting worked up. “They eat beignets for dinner and I don’t even know where my dad is. And then when you came—” she looked at Matt then shrugged “—everybody got so weird.”
Matt stepped past me and collapsed on the bed as though his knees had just been broken. “I’m not your father, Katie,” he whispered, his green eyes sincere and earnest in a million different ways.
“You’re not?” she asked, and he shook his head. “You’re sure?”
“Very sure. If I was your father, I would have been here your whole life,” he said. Katie’s chin dropped a notch, and my whole body started to shake. “I never would have left you.”
I could not look Matt in the eyes. Actually, I really could barely stand to be in this room with him, the embodiment of everything I refused to want but wanted anyway.
I took a deep breath and stepped right over the dark, bottomless, treacherous cavern that was the