I Left Him at the Altar to Hide Our Daughter, and Now He Owns the Inn Where I Cook novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Stay

The ferry pulled away from the landing without her.

Eleanor walked up the hill to a black car that had been waiting all along.

The driver held the door.

She didn't look back.

Lawrence drove us home with Poppy in my lap and his hand on her foot the whole way.

Nobody said anything about the paper.

We didn't have to.

That night we didn't do a supper.

It was a Wednesday anyway.

Hattie took Poppy upstairs at the bakery at seven, washed and fed and in her whale pajamas.

"She's sleeping with me tonight," Hattie said. "In my bed. With the door locked and the bat by the door."

"Hattie."

"Your uncle's softball bat. It's seen worse."

Poppy hugged me hard.

Then she hugged Lawrence, standing on the bottom stair so she could reach his neck.

"Will Grandma come back?"

"Not tonight," he said.

"Will you?"

"In the morning. With pancakes."

"Aunt Hattie makes the pancakes."

"Then I'll bring the syrup."

She considered that and found it acceptable.

Hattie looked at me over Poppy's head.

"Go on," she said. "Both of you. I'm not blind."

Lawrence lived in the boathouse.

He'd moved out of the owner's rooms in the inn the day his mother moved into the Captain's Suite.

He'd never moved back.

There was a loft up a ladder, over the old boat bays.

One window looking out on the harbor.

A mattress on the floor, a lamp, a shelf of his father's sailing books.

He climbed up first and held out his hand.

I took it.

The loft smelled of cedar and tar and old rope.

The harbor was silver through the window.

Out past the breakwater the bell buoy rang.

We stood there in the low light, not touching.

"I keep thinking about her face," he said. "When she asked me if it was true."

"I know."

"She looked at you like she didn't know you."

"For about four seconds."

"Four seconds is a long time to be five."

I put my hand on his chest.

His heart was going hard under my palm.

"She went to you," I said. "When you held out your arms, she didn't even think."

He covered my hand with his.

"I don't know how to be anybody's father."

"You took her sailing. You fixed her drawing. You told the whole green she was yours."

"You're doing fine."

He looked down at me.

He touched my hair, where it was cut short at the jaw, the way he had on the seawall.

This time he didn't stop.

His fingers slid into my hair and tipped my head back.

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