20. Luisa
— ? —
Luisa
Poppy turned four a few days later.
I woke her up with French toast shaped like butterflies, badly shaped, but she didn’t care, and a crown made of purple construction paper that I’d stayed up too late making.
She wore it all through breakfast, announcing to each bite of French toast that she was now FOUR, which was practically a GROWN-UP, and grown-ups got to do important things like stay up late and eat candy for dinner.
“Not quite, baby,” I said, kissing her syrupy cheek.
“But I’m FOUR.”
“You’re still not eating candy for dinner.”
She sighed dramatically. “Being four is HARD.”
After breakfast, while she was distracted naming her new butterfly French toast (Bartholomew, Sparkle, and Professor Fluffington), I texted Wade.
It’s Poppy’s birthday today. Party starts at 2 if you want to come.
His response came in three seconds.
I’ll come early. Help set up.
You don’t have to-
I want to.
He showed up at 11 a.m., wearing jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The tattoos were visible on his forearms, I tried not to look at them, tried not to think about all those images dedicated to me, and he was carrying two bags full of streamers and balloons.
It wasn’t even the tattoos, if I was honest. It was his hands, the size of them, a bag swinging from each fist like it weighed nothing, and the two undone buttons at his collar and the wedge of skin they left bare.
And the way the cotton pulled across his back every time he shifted his grip, and the fact that I was standing in my own doorway inventorying my ex-husband like a woman with no sense and even less self-respect.
I looked very hard at the balloons instead.
“I wasn’t sure what colors she liked,” he said by way of greeting. “So I bought all of them.”
“She likes purple.”
“I bought a lot of purple.”
We worked side by side for the next two hours, transforming my small backyard into a four-year-old’s paradise.
Wade hung streamers from the fence while I arranged snacks on the folding table.
He inflated balloons until his face turned red and I had to show him how to tie them properly.
He assembled the folding chairs with the kind of focused concentration usually reserved for defusing bombs.
Then came the pi?ata.
“I’ve got this,” he said confidently, carrying the papier-maché unicorn toward the large oak tree.
“Do you need help?”
“I’ve got this.”
He climbed onto a step stool. Reached for the branch. Reached farther. The stool wobbled. He overcorrected. And then Wade Buckley, financial genius and tattooed billionaire, toppled backward onto the grass with a sound like a deflating balloon.
Poppy, who had been watching from the back door, howled with laughter.
“MAMA HE FELL DOWN.”
I snorted. Couldn’t help it. He was lying in the grass with the unicorn pi?ata on his chest, looking up at the sky like he was questioning all his life choices.
“Very graceful,” I said.
“Thank you. I’ve been practicing.”
He got up. Brushed himself off. Climbed back onto the stool.
Then he fell again.
This time it was clearly on purpose, an exaggerated flail and tumble that ended with him flat on his back, arms and legs spread like a starfish. Poppy was laughing so hard she had to hold onto the door frame.
“Again!” she shrieked. “Again again again!”
Wade fell three more times before he finally got the pi?ata hung. Each fall was more dramatic than the last. By the end, Poppy had tears streaming down her face and I was laughing too, the sound surprising me with its warmth.
The guests arrived at 2 p.m. Birdie came with her husband Julio. Agnes from dance class, walking without her walker for the occasion. Doris with a peach cobbler she insisted was a birthday tradition. A few mothers from Poppy’s playgroup, their children swarming the backyard like cheerful locusts.
And then it was time for presents.
Poppy tore through wrapping paper with ruthless efficiency.
A stuffed elephant from Birdie. A set of colored pencils from Agnes.
A dress-up costume from one of the playgroup moms. She thanked everyone with the gracious manners I’d been drilling into her, even remembering to say “this is so beautiful” about a gift that was clearly socks.
Then Wade stepped forward.
I caught his arm. “I told you last-second about the party. It’s okay if you don’t have anything-”
“I have something.”
“Wade, remember. Twenty dollars.”
“I remember.”
He walked to his car and came back carrying a large shape wrapped in an old bedsheet. When he set it down in front of Poppy and pulled the sheet away, the whole yard went quiet.
It was a dollhouse.
Not just any dollhouse, a masterpiece of miniature architecture.
Three stories tall, with real working windows and tiny chandeliers and wallpaper in each room.
The detail was extraordinary. Furniture that looked hand-carved.
A spiral staircase that actually spiraled.
A small family of dolls positioned in the living room like they’d been waiting for someone to play with them.
“Whoa,” Poppy breathed.
“Do you like it?” Wade’s voice was uncertain. Hopeful.
“I LOVE IT.”
She threw herself at him, her arms wrapping around his neck, her face pressed against his shoulder. Wade caught her, held her, his eyes closing briefly.
“Thank you thank you thank you,” she chanted into his shirt.
“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”
The other children swarmed the dollhouse, their hands reaching for the tiny furniture, their voices overlapping in excitement. I pulled Wade aside while Poppy was distracted.
“That definitely cost more than twenty dollars.”
“Technically, it didn’t cost anything.”
“Wade.”
“It’s free. It was my mom’s.”
I blinked. “Your mom’s?”
“Cecelia.” His voice softened on the name. “She had it when she was a little girl. It’s one of the few things I have left of hers. I’ve kept it in storage for years, but…” He shrugged. “It should be played with. That’s what she would have wanted.”
A lump formed in my throat. Cecelia Buckley had died when Wade was fifteen. He rarely talked about her, but when he did, his whole face changed, younger, somehow. More vulnerable.
“Wade, that’s… that’s incredibly generous.”
“It’s where it belongs.”
I wanted to say more, to tell him that giving Poppy his dead mother’s dollhouse was either the sweetest thing anyone had ever done or the most manipulative, and I genuinely couldn’t tell which. But the lump in my throat wouldn’t let me speak.
“How did you get it here so fast?” I asked instead. “I only texted you this morning.”
“I had my assistant fly it in.”
“You had your assistant fly a dollhouse from… where?”
“Boston. That’s where the storage unit is.”
“You flew a dollhouse from Boston.”
“It wouldn’t fit in the car.”
I stared at him. “You rented a plane just to bring a dollhouse?!”
Wade looked genuinely offended. “Luve, I OWN the plane. I didn’t rent it.”
“You own a plane.”
“Several, actually.”
“Several planes.”
“For business purposes.” He said it like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
“Wade.”
“It’s more practical than it sounds.”
I pressed my hand against my forehead. The man was impossible. Absolutely, completely, infuriatingly impossible.
“Come on,” I said finally. “It’s time for cake.”
The cake was chocolate with purple frosting and four candles that Poppy blew out in one determined breath. We sang happy birthday. We clapped. We took pictures of her face covered in frosting.
Then Birdie was there with her phone, gesturing at me and Wade.
“Get together,” she said. “The three of you. For a picture.”
I hesitated.
“Go on,” Agnes called from the snack table. “You’re all wearing purple. It’s practically required.”
Wade looked at me. His eyes were shining.
“Do you want me in the picture?” he asked quietly.
I did. God help me, I did.
“Yes,” I said. “Poppy, come here. Wade, stand on the other side.”
We arranged ourselves. Poppy in the middle, me on one side, Wade on the other. His arm came around behind my back, not quite touching but close enough that I could feel the warmth of him through my shirt.
“Say cheese!” Birdie called.
“CHEESE!”
The camera clicked.
I stepped away quickly. “Please don’t tattoo that.”
Wade winked. “I can’t promise that.”
I laughed. The sound surprised me, surprised both of us, maybe. It was an unguarded laugh, warm and real, and Wade’s whole face transformed when he heard it.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like I just gave you a gift.”
“You did.”
I walked away before I could respond. Went to cut more cake. Smiled at the other parents. Made conversation I didn’t hear because my brain was too busy trying to process what the fuck was happening and why was I laughing with him and why did his smile make my chest ache and why-
I needed air.
Near the fence, away from the party, I could watch without participating. Poppy was at the dollhouse again, Wade crouched beside her, listening intently as she explained which rooms belonged to which dolls.
He was so patient with her. So attentive. The way he looked at her, like she was the most important person in the world, like everything she said mattered, pried my chest open a little further.
This is what she deserved, I thought. A father who looks at her like that.
I started walking toward them. The birthday crown had slipped sideways on Poppy’s head, and I was going to fix it, but Wade beat me to it. His big hands adjusted the paper crown with impossible gentleness, smoothing Poppy’s hair back from her face.
“There,” he said. “Perfect princess.”
“I’m not a princess,” Poppy informed him. “I’m a DRAGON.”
“My mistake. Perfect dragon.”
Poppy giggled. Then her face grew serious, that thoughtful expression she got when she was processing big news.
“Wade?” she said.
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Are you my daddy?”
The question was loud enough to carry. I saw Birdie freeze by the snack table. Saw Agnes’s hand pause halfway to her mouth. Saw every adult in the yard turn toward us like flowers following the sun.
Wade looked up.
His eyes found mine across the yard.
I held his gaze.
And barely, just barely, I nodded.