Her yellow dress flashed between the legs of Harold’s guests.
Someone laughed.
Someone else cleared their throat.
“Mia, honey, come back here, please!”
I chased her around a cocktail table and nearly collided with a woman in cream silk, almost knocking over her champagne.
“I’m so sorry. She’s just excited.”
The woman gave me a smile that wasn’t really a smile.
Then Harold appeared, laughing, and scooped Mia up beneath her arms as if she weighed nothing.
“Gotcha, wild thing,” he said, smiling.
“Harold, I’m so sorry. I’ll take her,” I said, hurrying toward him.
“Alison, relax. Breathe. She’s four. Nobody minds.”
He settled Mia against his hip and turned so she could see the lights reflecting on the pool.
I watched my daughter’s entire body relax against him in almost the same way she used to settle against Mike.
The sight stirred something complicated in me.
Then Mia suddenly went still.
Her eyes fixed on the side of Harold’s head.
Her small hand lifted and hovered near his ear as if she’d spotted something no one else could see.
“Mommy, Daddy’s there.”
I froze.
A waiter walking behind us slowed down.
All the color drained from Harold’s face.
He put Mia down too quickly.
She stumbled half a step before catching herself.
Then she pointed directly at him.
“Mommy, but Daddy’s there. Look! You need to save him!”
Heads turned.
A man near the bar stopped talking halfway through a sentence.
Heat rushed into my cheeks despite the summer air.
“Sweetheart, sweetheart, come here.”
I knelt and pulled Mia against me, smoothing her hair while whispering meaningless little reassurances into her curls.
“Harold, I am so sorry. She misses her dad. Sometimes she just… she says things.”
Harold nodded.
But he wasn’t really looking at me.
His eyes were fixed on the ground between us.
“It’s fine. It’s fine, Alison. Kids, right?”
Then my boss stepped backward.
Only one step.
But it felt strangely like a door closing.
“Excuse me for a minute.”
He walked toward the far end of the pool where the string lights hung lower.
I watched him leave while Mia’s fingers remained curled into the collar of my dress.
“Come on, baby. Let’s get you a cookie.”
I guided her toward the dessert table, sat her on a lounger, and put a lemon square in her hand.
She ate slowly, swinging her legs, completely calm again as though nothing unusual had happened.
But I couldn’t forget Harold’s reaction.
The sudden pallor.
The way he’d almost dropped her.
“Grief,” I muttered to myself. “Kids and grief. That’s all it is.”
Except Harold hadn’t looked like a man startled by a strange comment from a child.
He had looked like someone who had accidentally heard the exact sentence he’d been afraid someone might say.
Rachel’s warning from the office kitchen came back to me.
What that might be doing to your standing at the firm.
I stood.
I asked Mrs. Peterson from accounting to keep an eye on Mia for a minute, then walked toward the corner where Harold had disappeared.
***
My boss stood near the pergola with Benjamin, his business partner.
Both were holding fresh drinks.
Harold’s back was turned toward me.
I slowed down, not wanting to interrupt, planning to wait for a natural pause before apologizing again.
Benjamin’s voice carried toward me, warm and teasing.
“And the renovation? Are you really going through with the whole second-floor rebuild? For a family? Harold, come on. Are you finally settling down on us?”
I couldn’t hear Harold’s reply.
His answer was low, brief, almost mumbled.
But I saw his shoulders stiffen beneath his linen jacket.
The question had landed too close to something.
My stomach dropped.
A second-floor rebuild.
For a family.
Harold didn’t have a family.
He’d never married.
He had no children.
His parents lived in Arizona.
His sister lived in Boston with three teenagers who probably wouldn’t willingly spend a weekend in his guest room.
