Chapter 19
Dash
I notice Sadie before she notices me. She’s sitting outside the clubhouse as she watches Owen chase Moose across the patch of grass near the patio fence.
Her shoulders are a little too tight, and even from across the yard, I can see the faint crease between her brows that’s become far too familiar over the last couple of weeks.
She’s been carrying fear like a second skin lately, and although she keeps smiling for Owen, there’s still something tired in the set of her mouth that makes me want to do something about it.
Preferably something loud, stupid, and distracting.
Owen shrieks with laughter when Moose skids to a halt in front of him and flops dramatically onto the grass as if the whole game has defeated him.
Sadie looks up at the sound, and her expression softens.
That’s the thing about her that gets me every time.
She doesn’t just smile; she opens. Her whole face changes, her eyes warming, her mouth broadening, and for a few seconds she looks like a woman who isn’t braced for the next bad thing.
I decide then and there that I want more of that.
I push away from the wall and walk toward her, taking my time, because I’ve learned that moving too quickly toward Sadie makes her wary, and I am trying, for once in my life, to be sensible.
It’s not easy. She looks gorgeous in the late afternoon light, with her hair loose around her shoulders and her legs tucked beneath her on the bench, and I know that if I got close enough to breathe her in, she would smell of sun-warmed skin.
“Put your shoes on,” I tell her.
She blinks at me. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Her eyes narrow. “What are you up to? I absolutely did not agree to anything.”
I grin at her, the easy, disarming smile that works on most women. “Good thing I wasn’t asking.”
That gets one corner of her mouth to lift, which is exactly what I was aiming for. She folds her arms. “What are you up to?”
I grin at her. “Something wicked.”
She gives me a flat look. “That could be anything.”
“The fun kind.”
Owen appears at my side as if he’s been waiting for permission to join in. “I wanna do something fun.”
“See?” I say, pointing at him. “He’s in.”
Sadie shakes her head, but she’s smiling now, and that smile is already worth the effort. “You’re impossible, and a bad influence on Owen.”
I lean in slightly and lower my voice as if I’m sharing a secret. “There’s a county fair in town tonight. Rides, food, games, the whole deal. Thought you might like it.”
Sadie hesitates, and I can see the calculations happening behind her eyes.
She’s thinking about practical things, about safety, about whether this is a good idea, about what it means to accept anything from us at all.
She is always thinking ahead, even when she is trying not to.
I respect that. I also want to distract her from it.
Owen solves the problem for her by grabbing both her hands and bouncing on his heels. “Please, Mommy. Please. I wanna go on the rides.”
She looks down at him, and the fight goes out of her in stages, like a door slowly unlocking. “Fine,” she tells him. She looks up at me. “That was underhand.”
I smile back at her. I knew there was no way she’d say no to Owen, and no way a four-year-old kid wouldn’t wanna go to the fair. Sneaky, but effective.
“You, Mister,” she says, tickling Owen’s stomach and making him squeal with delight, “Are thoroughly spoiled.”
“I know,” Owen says, perfectly pleased with himself.
I laugh. “Can’t blame me for that one; that is definitely your fault.”
Sadie shoots me a look, but there is no heat in it. “Five minutes,” she says, already giving in.
“Take ten,” I tell her. “I’ll be waiting outside.”
***
When we get to the fair, the whole place is loud and bright and buzzing with the kind of energy that makes it impossible to stand still.
Music blares from somewhere near the food stalls, children scream happily on the rides, and the Ferris wheel turns slowly above everything else like a lit-up clock face.
Owen sees the bumper cars and nearly launches himself out of his shoes. “Can we do that one?”
“Later. I was gonna ask if you wanted something to eat, but you hate all that sugary stuff, so I’ll eat your share. Maybe we’ll find you a carrot.”
The look of horror that flashes on Owen’s face is worth its weight in gold.
“Only joking, kiddo,” I say, and hope I haven’t broken one of Sadie’s parenting rules about sugary snacks before dinner.
Sadie tries to bite back a smile. She looks more relaxed already, which is good, because I was beginning to worry that staying at the clubhouse was making her anxiety even worse.
“So what’s it gonna be, donuts or fries?” I ask.
Owen’s brow creases in deep concentration as he weighs up the options. “Donuts.”
“Good choice. Start with dessert,” I tell him.
Owen ends up with a powdered sugar beard and both hands wrapped around a paper tray of French fries by the time I finish getting our food.
Sadie claims she’s not hungry, which I know for a fact is a lie, so I order double.
Good job I did, because she steals half of mine when she thinks I’m not looking.
I see her do it, of course, and I let her, because the small act of her taking something from me without hesitation feels weirdly satisfying.
“Are you going to keep staring at me while I eat?” she asks eventually, catching me.
“Probably.”
“Why?”
“Because you look pretty when you are covered in sugar.” I lean over and wipe a bit from her cheek, lingering just enough to make it more than just a simple gesture.
Her cheeks go pink, and I feel annoyingly pleased with myself. She hides a smile behind her cup of lemonade, but I see it anyway.
Owen drags us onto the bumper cars before we can settle into any kind of rhythm.
I let him choose the one with the sticky steering wheel and the cracked vinyl seat, which turns out to be a mistake, because he spends the entire ride shrieking with delighted fury every time he collides with someone else.
Sadie laughs so hard she has to brace one hand against the side of the car.
It’s good seeing her so relaxed and able to forget about everything.
Even if it’s only for a couple of hours.
I look over at her while she is still laughing, head tipped back, hair catching the light from the ride, and something in me settles and tightens at the same time.
It’s a strange feeling, wanting to be the reason somebody feels lighter.
Sadie laughs as if she’s almost forgotten how, and every time it happens, it feels like I’ve managed to pry open a window in a room that has been shut too long.
We end up in the arcade after that. The place is a riot of flashing lights and electronic beeping.
Owen immediately starts losing his mind over skee-ball, and Sadie stands beside the machine with one hand over her mouth, laughing every time he misses the highest point lane by a mile, and still acts like he has been robbed.
I stand behind him and help, mostly by pretending I’m not helping.
He gets more animated with every roll, and Sadie keeps glancing at me, as if she can’t decide whether to be amused or suspicious.
I decide to lean in and make matters worse.
“See,” I tell Owen, sliding a ball into his hand, “You have to aim like you mean it. Throw it really hard.”
He squints at the lane with the gravity of a man trying to launch a missile. “Like this?”
“Exactly like that.”
He throws. The ball ricochets straight into a side rail and bounces off somewhere humiliating. Owen gasps. “You made me miss on purpose!” he says, pointing his finger at me and gaping at Sadie indignantly.
Sadie makes a choking sound of laughter that has me grinning before I can stop it. “He’s four, you shouldn’t be sabotaging him to win,” she says, but there’s no malice in her tone.
“I’ve never sabotaged anything in my life.”
She looks at me, completely unconvinced. “You’ve got a face that says otherwise.”
I shrug. “What can I say, I’m competitive.”
That makes her laugh again, and this time it’s so open and genuine that a couple of people nearby glance over.
I don’t care because I’m too busy staring at her.
Her shoulders have lowered. Her mouth is no longer drawn tight.
The worry’s still there, of course. But for this one evening, it’s loosened its grip enough to let something brighter through.
When Owen gets distracted by a claw machine full of cheap stuffed toys, Sadie and I end up standing a little apart from the noise.
The arcade lights throw colors across her face, making her look younger and softer at the same time.
She leans one shoulder against the side of the game cabinet and takes a slow sip of her drink before looking up at me.
“You’re good at this,” she says.
“At making bad decisions?”
“At making things easier.”
I shrug, because that sounds too close to something serious. “Humor is mostly a defense mechanism.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Only mostly?”
I run a hand through my hair. “Mostly. The rest is poor impulse control and unresolved issues.”
That earns another laugh, and she shakes her head like she’s caught me out at something. “You always joke around like that? Or are you ever serious?”
I gasp, pretending to clutch my pearls. “Me, serious? Never.”
I can’t wiggle my way out of this one. Sadie looks at me seriously. “Why?”
I could lie. I could make something clever out of it. Instead, I glance toward Owen, who’s now shouting at the claw machine as if volume alone might improve his chances, and answer honestly. “Because it’s easier to make people laugh than to let them see when things are bad.”
Sadie’s expression shifts at that. She doesn’t push, which I appreciate, but her eyes soften with a kind of understanding that makes my chest feel oddly bare. She knows what it’s like to be the one who keeps the smile in place for everybody else. She knows what it costs.
By the time we head home, Owen is asleep in the back seat, one hand curled around the stuffed bear I won for him on a shooting game.
After five failed attempts and a string of increasingly dramatic accusations against the machine, he allowed me to convince him that you never win on claw machines.
He was suitably impressed with my shooting skills, though if Sadie was, she hid it well.
Sadie sits in the passenger seat with her shoulders finally loose, one hand resting on her knee. She’s tired, but she looks relaxed. When she turns to look at me, I see the warmth in her eyes, a softness that’s not always been easy to bring out. “Thank you,” she says quietly.
I keep my eyes on the road. “For what?”
“For making him laugh.”
I laugh under my breath. “You think that was for him?”
She looks at me then, really looks, and I swear something in the air between us changes. Not in a dramatic way. More like a thread drawing tight. “You made me laugh, too,” she admits.
I glance at her, and there is the smile again, smaller this time but real. It makes my chest do something annoyingly stupid. “Good,” I tell her. “That was the whole point.”