But Austin’s series ended with a photograph from grade eleven. The year he died. Regret for might-have-beens twisted her stomach, then she turned, putting the pictures behind her.
“Miss Deacon, you came.” The bright voice of Natasha banished the memory. As the little girl bounded into the room, her brown hair bounced behind her.
Today Natasha wore a lime-green T-shirt tucked into torn blue jeans. A pair of sparkly yellow angel wings completed the look.
Obviously the little girl had chosen some of her own clothes today.
“Wow. Don’t you look spiffy,” Hailey said, trying not to smile too hard at her ensemble.
“These are my favorite wings,” Natasha announced as she lifted the wand in her hand and performed an awkward twirl, almost knocking over a plant stand in the process.
“Natasha, please, no dancing in the house,” Dan said, catching the rocking houseplant and setting it out of reach of her wings. “I’d like you to go take off your fairy wings.”
Quick as a flash Natasha’s good mood morphed into a sullen glare. “I like my wings and you said I couldn’t wear them to school. But this isn’t school.”
“This is like school,” Dan said, kneeling down in front of her. “And I want you to behave for Miss Deacon.”
Natasha caught the end of her hair and twirled it around her finger, her attention on the books on the table and not on what her father was saying. “Are those mine?” she asked.
“Yes. They are.” Hailey glanced at her watch. “And it’s almost time for us to start.”
“But first the fairy wings come off,” Dan insisted.
“I want to keep them on,” she protested, wiggling away from him.
Dan cradled her face in his hands and turned her to face him. “Sorry, honey, but now it’s time for school, not time for pretending. Now I have to go to work and you have to stay up here, but I’ll be back at lunchtime, okay?”
Natasha pouted but then it seemed the fight went out of her. “Okay, Daddy. But you’ll be right downstairs, won’t you?”
Dan nodded, tucking a tangle of hair behind her ear. Then he brushed a gentle kiss over her forehead. “Love you, munchkin,” he said as he slipped the wings off her shoulders.
“Love you, punchkin,” she repeated with a giggle.
Dan set the wings aside and smoothed her hair again, smiling at her, the love for his daughter softening his features.
Hailey swallowed as she watched the scene between them. She always knew Dan would make a good father.
Her heart twisted a moment with old sorrow and old regrets and a flurry of other questions. Why had Dan married Lydia? Why had he moved on so quickly from her to another woman?
She pressed her eyes shut a moment, as if to close her mind to the past.
It was none of her business, she reminded herself.
And it was a bleak reminder that what she and Dan had was dead and gone.
Chapter Four
“I don’t want to do math now. I hate math.” Natasha pushed her chair away from the table, the wooden legs screeching over the worn linoleum. She folded her arms over her chest as she pushed out her lower lip.
For the past hour Hailey had been working with Natasha on math problems and all they had to show for the time were some princess doodles on the bottom of the page and one measly solved problem. Which made Hailey wonder how much homeschooling Lydia had done.
“Don’t say hate. Say instead that you don’t like math,” Hailey corrected, picking up the pencil Natasha had tossed on the table. “We want to save the word hate for really big things.”
Natasha shot her a puzzled glance. “What big things?”
Hailey held the pencil out to Natasha, waiting for her to take it. “Big things like sin and killing and saying bad things about God.”
Natasha pursed her lips, as if pondering this, then tossed her brown hair over her shoulder and took the pencil from Hailey.
“My mommy said there’s no such thing as God,” Natasha said, doodling a princess in one corner of the paper.
Hailey wasn’t sure what to say as she watched Natasha add a crown to the princess’s head. She didn’t want to disparage Natasha’s memory of her mother, but she was fairly sure Dan disagreed with Lydia’s beliefs. He’d always had a strong faith in God. At least he had until the day of Austin’s death.
Natasha wiggled a bit, then put her pencil down. “I have to go the bathroom,” she said, slipping off her chair before Hailey could stop her.
Hailey let her go. Finding routine would take time with a little girl who didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word.
As Hailey gathered up the pencils Natasha had scattered over the table, her eyes were drawn to the pictures on the wall of Austin and Dan.
She drew in a long, slow breath, stifling the painful memories resurrected by Austin’s face. So easily she remembered the day Austin died.
The three of them, Dan, Hailey and Austin, had been snowboarding together. Hailey had gotten separated from Dan and Austin in the lineup for the chairlift and, by the time she got to the top of the hill, only Dan was waiting for her. He told her that Austin had gone off on his own.
Dan and Hailey had spent most of the afternoon on the runs at the top of the mountain, and they got to the bottom only to find out that Austin had gone out of bounds on a black diamond run and had gone over a rocky ledge.
He had died instantly.
And right after that Dan and Hailey’s relationship had fallen apart.
“I’m done,” Natasha announced, coming back to the room.
The little girl’s voice broke into the thoughts flashing through Hailey’s mind. She pulled her hands over her face as if wiping them away. She needed to get out of this apartment and the memories it evoked. And from the way Natasha had been struggling to concentrate the past hour, she needed to go out too.
Hailey made a quick decision.
“You know what we’re going to do?” Hailey asked, gathering up the papers and the pencils. “We’re going to do some schoolwork downstairs.”
Natasha jumped up eagerly, then frowned. “My daddy said he doesn’t want me in the store. He said I make problems.”
“I’ll be with you.” Hailey picked up a folder and slipped the papers inside.
“But my daddy—” Natasha protested again.
“I’ll talk to your daddy and help him to understand,” Hailey said with more assurance than she felt.
All morning the little girl had been unable to concentrate on even the simplest problems. Maybe a different method of teaching was in order. And Hailey had just the idea of how this was to be done.
“First I have to put on my wings,” Natasha said.
Hailey didn’t bother to stop her. One step at a time, she reminded herself.
A few moments later, wings firmly in place, she and Natasha were headed down the narrow stairs inside the apartment leading to the store below.
“We have to be quiet,” Hailey whispered. “We don’t want your daddy to get angry with us.”
Hailey pushed open the door and was greeted by the buzz of conversation and the chiming of the cash register