"Mom? Do you think Edward is coming back?" Peyton asks as she sits down beside me on the front steps.
Her voice is so sad. As much as I want to tell her yes, I have a feeling the answer is no … at least not tonight. I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her close, rubbing my hand up and down her arm to keep the chill of the early October air away.
I sigh.
I knew he was having a bad day. I could tell the minute he walked in the house and stomped his feet on the doormat. It's been raining, it's cold, he's tired, and Peyton has been, for lack of a better word, a complete pain for the past two days. Add a crabby seven-year-old to a twenty-seven year-old man that has no experience with kids and who's already in a bad mood and it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Not that him slamming the door and leaving is anywhere close to all right.
"I didn't mean to make him so mad," she tells me in a heartbroken voice. She lays her head on my shoulder and we both look toward the driveway as if somehow he's going to magically appear.
Her fingers rub the bracelet that never leaves her wrist. Getting her to take it off for her bath every night is next to impossible. It's her most prized possession - a fact of which she tells anyone and everyone … repeatedly.
I kiss the top of her head and enjoy the sense of comfort her coconut-lime shampoo gives me. "I know, baby, but you have to learn a no means no. What he did wasn't right, but the fact that you pushed him to the point where he lost his temper wasn't right either."
"He's not going to go away is he? I mean, he still loves me right?" Her eyes fill with tears. She sniffs and it tears my heart open.
I turn and pull her into my lap, wrapping my arms tightly around her. "Of course he does, Peyton. Edward will always love you," I tell her.
"I don't want him to be mad at me anymore," she sniffs once more.
I close my eyes and say a quick prayer that he comes back soon.
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