Touching Down(27)

I’d made the decision, but it was the three of us who had to suffer the consequences of it.

I watched Grant place Charlie into bed like she was capable of shattering from a sudden movement. I watched him carefully tuck her in, the sheet first, followed by the comforter. I watched him hover beside the bed, staring at her like she was the most miraculous thing he’d ever witnessed.

I watched a father fall in total and utter awe of his child.

“She’s the best,” he whispered, stepping back beside me.

“No argument from me.” I nudged him as I headed for the door. “She likes her nightlight on and that ratty, old one-eyed bear tucked in with her.” I indicated the well-loved bear on the dresser before I moved into the hall.

I’d had seven years of tucking her in. He was owed this one all on his own. It was important he learned the routine.

Giving him a minute, I went into the living room to start cleaning up. Between the two of them, they’d managed to polish off the entire sundae, and Charlie had made sure to offer Grant a juice box when she’d gotten one for herself. He’d graciously accepted it and, surprisingly, sucked it all down, which I discovered when I picked it up to toss it away.

“So? How are you holding up?” I asked when he emerged from the hall.

He took the bowl from my hands and carried it to the sink. “Extremely well considering I just found out I have a daughter and discovered the real reason my girlfriend ran out on me all those years ago.”

After clipping the bag of mini-marshmallows, I tucked it back into the cupboard. Holy sugar apocalypse. “You’re a natural.”

Something on the small dining room table caught Grant’s eye. He wandered over to it and thumbed through the papers and books sprawled out. “Are you reading this or is Charlie?” He held up a library copy of White Fang.

“That’s your daughter’s weekly reading assignment,” I answered.

“This is the other stuff she’s working on?” He skimmed through some math worksheets and writing exercises. When he got to a particularly impressive-looking division worksheet, his brows lifted.

“It turns out you and I create really intelligent offspring. Kind of crazy, right?” Grabbing a file with last week’s lesson plans, I set it in front of him.

As he flipped through the pages, he suddenly seemed to choke up.

“Grant?” I asked gently.

“She’s smart. She’s so goddamned smart.” He swallowed and smiled at the same time, lifting a worksheet she’d gotten twenty out of twenty correct on. “She didn’t turn out like me. She’s not like me. Thank god.”

My throat burned when I realized what he was getting at. Grant had never thrived in school. Not because he didn’t give a shit, but because he just couldn’t get it. He tried, but it never clicked. Hell, every last child who’d come out of The Clink had struggled in school, but most of the kids just didn’t care. Grant did. He wanted to educate himself. To be considered a smart person.

Coming up behind him, I stared at the same sheet he was. Then I set my hand on it and lowered it back into the file. “She’s loyal. She’s determined.” I came around, so I was in front of him. “She’s got a weird sense of humor and likes breakfast for dinner.” When he wouldn’t meet my eyes, I lifted onto my toes, so I was directly in his line of sight. I pressed my hand into his chest. “She turned out a lot like you.”

I stood there for another minute, making sure that sank in, then I headed to the fridge. “Do you want something to drink? I can offer you a juice box or a juice box or a gee whiz”—I lifted a green box in the air—“a juice box.”

Grant chuckled. “I’m good, but thanks.”

“Next time you stop by, I’ll try to have an adult beverage in the fridge.”

“The most adult drink I have these days is coffee,” he replied.

“No more of the hard stuff?” I asked, closing the fridge.

Half a smile formed on his face. “Unless you count the occasional juice box when I’m feeling crazy.”

My eyebrows came together. “Really? You don’t drink anymore?”

One of his shoulders lifted. “A guy’s got to grow up sometime.” He set the file down and came over to help me wipe the scatter of sprinkles off of the counter. “You did such a great job with her. All alone, being so young.” Grant’s brows came together. “How did you do it?”

My shoulder lifted. “It was easy. I just thought about what my mom would have done, and I did the opposite.”

Half a smile crawled into place. “I know it wasn’t easy.”