Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Her mother corrected her. “It’s remembered, Ella.”
Gray turned to me. “It’s Saturday.” He pulled on the material of his pale green polo and then began to sign. “Saturday. Sage.”
It hit me that the two of them were wearing the same shade of sage green. Ella had on a light green T-shirt.
I wrinkled my brow with a curious smile. “I didn’t realize the days of the week were color-coded.”
Ella tugged at Gray’s shirt and asked him to help her get her new stroller from the closet, which left me standing alone with Max.
She didn’t even pretend to smile. Instead, she started right in. “It’ll be a lot to handle soon, stepping into the shoes of a dead woman whose child is devastated.”
My mouth opened and stayed that way. I’d been expecting her to be a bitch, but Jesus…really? What the hell did I say to that? I stayed quiet because she’d rendered me speechless, not out of respect to her.
She figured she’d continue since I was, apparently, all ears. “She needs to bond with her father. Don’t interrupt that to play house. If you’re not going to be a mother to her, let them be. A loss from a breakup is no less than a loss from a death to a child. You’ll devastate her when you decide to walk away.”
Gray and Ella walked back, smiling. He took one look at me, and his smile faded. “Everything okay?”
Max answered. “We were just discussing my prognosis.”
Gray’s face turned solemn, and he nodded like he understood. “Oh.” He rubbed my arm. “You ready to go, babe?”
I nodded.
Outside, I stood back and watched as Gray strapped Ella into a car seat in the back of the car and loaded the pink stroller into the trunk. When the three of us were alone in the backseat, Ella said something I didn’t hear, and Gray threw his head back in laughter. The two of them had definitely connected on some level already. Suddenly I felt like a third wheel and thought maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to come.
I’d been lost in thought and heard Gray’s voice, yet the words he’d said were out of reach.
He squeezed my hand. “You okay? You seem like you’re somewhere else.”
I looked out the window and noticed we were already going back over the bridge to Manhattan. The first ten minutes of the drive were gone. “Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry. Where are we going, anyway?”
“I thought we’d get out at 72nd Street and walk over to Conservatory Water.”
“That’s the place where they race the model—”
Gray shushed me and winked. “It’s a surprise for her.”
I smiled. “I guess I need to get used to spelling things.”
Ella had been swinging her legs and looking out the window as we crossed the bridge. But she heard the word spell.
“I can spell my name!” She signed as she called out the letters. “E-L-L-A.”
Gray beamed. “I’m not sure learning Hindu to converse in private would matter. She’d pick it up faster than we could. Smart as a whip.”
Ella pointed to her head. “Daddy gave me my brain.”
My eyes grew wide. Gray lowered his voice and whispered to me. “It’s not what you think. I’ll explain later.”
Traffic was light, so we breezed over to the park. Again I watched the interaction between Gray and Ella, fascinated by how at ease he seemed to be with his little girl already. Once he unloaded the pink stroller with pedals from the car and strapped Ella in, he told Al to meet us back at this spot in two hours.
Ella watched everything going on around us as we walked toward the water, which gave Gray and me a chance to talk.
“She’s obsessed with the E.B White Stuart Little book and movie,” he said. “Her mother mentioned some of her favorite things in the letter she wrote me. So I watched it the other night to have something to talk to her about, and I realized that a big part of the movie takes place in this park at the Conservatory Water—the place where everyone sails the remote-control sailboats. Max said she’s never been here, so I thought she might recognize it from the story.”
I smiled. “That’s really sweet. I bet she’s going to love it.”
No sooner than the words left my mouth, Ella validated my thought. She shrieked and pointed toward the lake filled with boats as it came into view when we turned the corner.
“Stuart, Stuart!” she yelled.
It reminded me of the kind of thing my dad would have done when I was growing up—on days he was my dad and not someone else’s.
For the next hour, Ella stayed glued to her seat, watching the hundreds of motorized sailboats floating around. Even though Gray had been clear that Stuart Little wasn’t really on any of them, I was pretty sure she was checking for herself. At one point, she climbed onto Gray’s lap and made herself comfortable. The look on his face was priceless. Happiness radiated from him.