“I love you, Aunt Hadley.”
My heart melted. It was the first time she’d said that, and it moved me so much tears welled in my eyes.
“I love you, too, baby.”
Her lips turned down in a frown.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She looked away, not saying anything. I got down on my knees so I was at her level and asked again.
“What if you and Uncle Wes don’t come back? Will Thor take care of me and Benny?”
It hit me all at once. Date night. Ben and Lauren had been on a date when a drunk driver hit their car. I closed my eyes, feeling like an asshole.
“We’ll be back, Annalise,” I said, holding her gaze. “We will. We’ll just go out for dinner and then we’ll come right back home.”
“Mommy and Daddy didn’t come back,” she said softly.
“That was a terrible accident, and—” My voice caught, and I cleared my throat. “And it makes sense that you’d worry about the same thing happening to me and Uncle Wes. But you can call us while we’re gone, as many times as you want, to make sure we’re still okay.”
She nodded, and I hugged her. My first instinct was to call off the date. To curl up in bed with Annalise and watch the Disney Channel where she could see me and know everything was okay.
I couldn’t be with her all the time, though. It was brutally unfair for a four-year-old to worry about losing the people she loves, but it was Annalise’s reality.
“Why don’t you let me do your hair before it’s time to leave? We’ll do something really fancy.” I said. “I can put some sparkly pins in it.”
“Yes!”
She was excited as she sat on the stool in front of Lauren’s vanity and watched me work. I pinned her curls up loosely and finished the updo with a bit of hairspray. After that, I tried on each outfit I’d considered for tonight, and she tried on three of her own dresses for me.
We went downstairs hand in hand. She was wearing a replica of the dress Anna wore in Frozen and I was wearing a little black dress that Annalise chose for me. I was a half hour late meeting Wes in the family room for the start of our date, but when I met his gaze, I saw he was smiling.
“My girls look spectacular,” he murmured, kissing my cheek.
“Sorry I’m so late,” I said in his ear. “She needed some girl time with me.”
“It’s all good,” he said. “Nash is having a crawling race with Benny and Lars is picking up pizza.”
I arched my brows in question. “A crawling race?”
“Yeah, and knowing him, he’ll pull ahead at the finish line and trash talk Benny for being so slow.”
Benny crawled everywhere these days. We had to keep him in his baby jumper or the playpen anytime we turned our backs for even a minute. Every day, he grew a little bigger and a little cuter, displaying his two bottom teeth when he smiled. When I combed his dark hair over to the side, he looked like a little man and all I wanted to do was snuggle with him. Now that he was crawling, though, he didn’t like to be held long.
“There’s your giraffe!” I heard Nash say from the dining room. “I’m gonna get it, Benny! That giraffe’s gonna be mine if you don’t pick it up, my dude.”
I cringed, laughing, just as I heard Annalise chiming in from the other room.
“It’s not fair to race him, Uncle Nash. He’s a baby!”
Wes kissed my forehead. “Let’s get out of here while we still can. We might want to leave Annalise in charge, though.”
“I didn’t even think about that,” Wes said an hour later over drinks at a downtown St. Louis steak house. “Poor kid, worried she’s going to lose us just like she lost her parents.”
“It broke my heart. I did my best to reassure her.”
He reached across the small table and took my hand. “I’m sure you did great. You’re good at that stuff.”
Wes was wearing dark gray dress pants and a light blue dress shirt, the shirt making his eyes look even bluer than usual. I remembered the first time we’d sat together at a nice restaurant—dinner with Ben and Lauren in New York five years ago. I’d considered him an irredeemable playboy back then, a guy who just wasn’t that deep and never would be.
Everything was different now. I’d been forced to see the real Wes—the man beneath the facade. He was everything Lauren had always told me he was—hardworking, generous, and loyal.
“Have we changed?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“We used to be like oil and water. I thought you were…well, you know what I thought.”
He grins. “Yeah, you were never shy about making sure I knew.”
“Was I…wrong?”