Chapter 7 #2
“We’ll make sure of it,” Jake says, and he means it completely.
She turns around and just goes. There’s no other way to describe it. One second she’s at the window, and then she’s touching the leather sectional, and then she’s at the kitchen island, and then she’s somewhere I cannot immediately locate, which is the most alarming.
I don’t know how she moves that fast. I genuinely do not understand the physics of it.
She reappears in front of one of Jake’s abstract canvases and stares at it.
“Why is this so sad?”
“It’s art,” Jake says.
“Did somebody get in trouble when they made this?”
“I paid quite a lot for that.”
I turn toward the kitchen so he can’t see me laughing.
Poppy has already moved on.
She finds the decorative pillows and begins pulling them off the couch one by one, stacking them on the floor with great purpose.
“What are you—” Jake starts.
“I’m making something.”
“Making what?”
“I don’t know.”
Jake looks at me. I shrug.
She dismantles the entire couch in four minutes. Jake watches it happen in real time and doesn’t stop it, which tells me his ability to parent and his ability to process are currently running on different speeds.
The coasters migrate to the kitchen. I redirect her from the kitchen island twice. She finds Jake’s collection of decorative bowls, decides they’re drums, and I get there just before Jake does and move them to a higher shelf without a word.
“How does she—” Jake starts.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I genuinely don’t know.”
Poppy is now standing on the coffee table with her hands on Jake’s face, studying him.
“Your eyes are blue,” she tells him.
“Yep.”
“Mine are blue, too.” She leans in close to check. “We match.”
She releases his face, hops off the table, and Jake makes a grab for her and misses by three inches. She’s already moving toward the window.
Jake looks at me from across the room.
I press my lips together very hard.
“I need things,” Jake announces, standing in his kitchen staring at a four-year-old who’s eating a granola bar and telling the ocean about her stuffed sea turtle through the window. “What the hell am I missing?”
“She needs swimwear. And Jake, you don’t own a single thing in this penthouse a child can eat off of.”
I grab my bag. “Come on. Ala Moana.”
Poppy turns away from the window. “Are we going somewhere?”
“Apparently,” I say.
“Can I wear my boots?”
She’s wearing sandals. Jake looks at me.
“Sure,” I say.
She disappears into the bedroom and reappears with sparkly rain boots. Jake crouches down and helps her pull them on.
He stands back up and looks at the boots, then the sky through the window.
“It’s not raining outside,” he says.
“She can wear them whenever she wants.” I pick up my bag. “Never argue with a toddler.”
He looks at Poppy, who’s already heading for the elevator.
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”
The children’s boutique at Ala Moana has tasteful display tables and soft music, and it’s completely unprepared for Poppy Hale.
She goes immediately for a sparkly display located directly in the center of the store. Jake follows her and I follow Jake, because someone has to.
“Swimwear,” I tell him. “That’s what we’re here for. And we need to find plates and cups somewhere that aren’t made of glass.”
“Right.” He turns to point Poppy toward the swimwear section, but she’s already gone.
We both look at the empty space where she just was.
“Where did she—”
“I don’t know,” I say.
We find her two displays over, on her tiptoes trying to pull a glittery headband off the rack, her whole body straining toward it.
“Poppy.” Jake crouches down next to her. “What are you doing?”
“I almost got it,” she says, still reaching.
“I can see that.” He unhooks the headband and holds it up. “This one?”
She grabs it immediately and puts it on her head. It falls over her eyes.
Jake looks at me. I look at the ceiling.
“Cart?” he says.
“Cart,” she confirms.
He takes her hand firmly and walks her back toward the swimwear section.
“We hold hands in the store,” he tells her.
Poppy looks at their joined hands, then up at him. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
She considers this with the expression of someone who isn’t fully convinced but is willing to table the argument for now.
He holds up a swimsuit with small turtles on it. “What do you think?”
Poppy doesn’t hesitate. “I want that one.”
“Done,” Jake says immediately.
“Can I get the other color, too?”
I watch something helpless cross his face.
“Yeah, buddy. Throw them in.”
I’ve known this man for years. I’ve watched him negotiate eight-figure donor commitments without blinking, and he just caved on matching swimsuits in under four seconds.
She’s still holding his hand.
We make it approximately six feet before Poppy spots a small backpack shaped like a sea turtle and stops walking entirely, which means Jake stops walking too, since they’re attached.
“Is this practical?” he asks me over her head.
“No.”
He looks down at Poppy, and she looks up at him.
“Let’s put it in the cart,” he says.
She beams at him like he just handed her the world, and Jake looks at her like he’s trying to figure out how something this small already has this much of his heart.
Back at the penthouse, the afternoon goes sideways in the best possible way.
Takeout containers cover the marble counters. Poppy eats six bites of rice, pushes the container away, and announces she’s finished.
Jake’s phone rings. He glances at the screen, then at Poppy, and picks up anyway, moving toward the corner of the kitchen.
“William. Yes, I’ve got the projections in front of me.”
Poppy slides off her stool.
I watch her take in the living room, spot Jake on the phone, and make a decision. She heads straight for him.
“Poppy—” I start.
“The second phase is contingent on the Holt commitment, which I expect to confirm by—”
“ARE SHARKS AWAKE AT NIGHTTIME?!” Poppy shrieks at full volume directly beside him.
Jake mutes the call so fast I almost miss it. “What?”
“Because if they’re awake at nighttime and they can climb stairs—”
“They can’t climb stairs. They’re fish.” He unmutes. “Apologies, William. As I was saying—”
I cross the kitchen, crouch down to Poppy’s level, and hold out my hand. “Come on. I need your help with something.”
She looks at my hand. Looks at Jake. Looks back at me. “What do you need help with?”
“Very important crayon work.”
She takes my hand.
Jake catches my eye over her head as I lead her away. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. The look on his face says it clearly enough.
I set her up at the kitchen island with paper and a glass of water and the box of crayons I packed this morning without thinking, the way you do when your hands know what needs doing before your brain has processed the decision.
“Sea turtles?” I ask.
She nods very seriously and keeps drawing.
I make tea and lean against the counter. Crayons spread across the marble. Poppy hums something tuneless and off-key. Jake paces the living room on his phone, glancing back at us every few minutes. The ocean is gold and enormous through all his expensive windows.
The penthouse doesn’t look like an architectural magazine spread anymore.
It looks like someone lives here.
I’m standing in that thought when Jake finishes his call, comes back to the kitchen, and just stops. He stands there with his phone in his hand and stares at the kitchen. The crayons. The takeout boxes. Poppy humming at his kitchen island.
He doesn’t say anything.
His expression has a softness I’ve never seen before.
“She’s on about her twelfth sea turtle drawing,” I say, mostly to give him somewhere to put his attention.
He’s quiet another moment. Then he pulls out a stool, picks up a blue crayon, and sits down next to Poppy.
“Can I help?”
She slides him a blank piece of paper without looking up. “You can do the water.”
He draws the water. It is genuinely terrible. Poppy studies it with the honesty of someone who hasn’t learned to soften criticism yet.
“The water doesn’t go like that.”
“How does it go?”
She takes the crayon out of his hand and corrects his waves. “Like that,” she says.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I turn back to my tea before either of them can see me smile.
By eight o’clock, Poppy is running on nothing and refusing to acknowledge it.
She’s been awake since before dawn after a cross-continental flight and a full afternoon of dismantling Jake Hale’s life, and she’s fighting the exhaustion with every cell she has.
Her eyes keep doing a slow, involuntary droop that she keeps snapping back from with determined blinks.
She still has a crayon in her hand. There are approximately thirty sea turtles on the paper in front of her.
Getting Poppy into the sea turtle pajamas takes twenty minutes, two negotiations, and one genuine standoff about whether teeth-brushing is strictly necessary tonight, during which Jake and I make eye contact over her head and he mouths what do I do and I mouth be firm and he turns back to her and says, “If you spend two minutes brushing, I’ll sit with you until you fall asleep. ”
Not particularly firm, but it results in teeth-brushing, so I’m counting it.
She’s finally in bed, sea turtle tucked beside her and Jake sitting on the edge of the mattress in the room that was empty yesterday. Tonight it has a small lamp and a half-built pillow fort in the corner that nobody got around to dismantling.
“Is Hawaii going to be my home now?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Jake says. “It’s going to be your home.”
“Do I have to go to a new school?”
“We’ll find you a great one. I promise.”
She looks at the ceiling. Her eyelids are losing the battle against sleep in slow increments. “What if I don’t like it?”
“Then we’ll find a better school. That’s the job. We just keep figuring it out.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Processing. “You’re not going to make me leave?”