We Ran From Our Babies' Fathers, Then One Toddler Went Viral novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Rule Three

Preston Aldridge could not flip a pancake.

I watched him fail at it from the kitchen island, where Poppy sat cross-legged on the counter in her sunhat, supervising.

"Wait," she said.

"I'm waiting."

"Not yet."

"I'm still waiting."

"Now."

He flipped.

The pancake landed on the stove, half on the burner and half on the floor.

Poppy considered it.

"That one's for the cat," she decided.

"Fair," Preston said.

His shirtsleeves were pushed up to the elbow and there was batter on his jaw.

It was the first dinner of his five nights.

I had come in to keep an eye on things and found myself, an hour later, still leaning on the island with a mug of tea going cold in my hands.

Bridget and Jack ate on the terrace with Max, six feet apart, not speaking.

I could hear Max narrating a dinosaur's life to both of them.

By nine the kids were asleep upstairs and the kitchen was clean.

I took my tea out to the back terrace.

The sea was black under a half moon.

I heard the door slide, and I did not turn around.

"Thirty days," Preston said, behind me. "I've used up one."

"You used it on pancakes."

"They were the right thing to spend it on."

I turned.

He stood a careful six feet away.

"Say it," he said. "Whatever you've been holding back since the doorway. I'd rather hear it than guess."

So I said it.

"You never came."

"I didn't know."

"I was alone on that bathroom floor with a test in my hand, and you never came. I called. I waited for you to answer. I didn't even get a no from you. I got a clinic."

"That was my mother."

"I know that now. But she isn't the person I waited for every day. You are."

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