“Of course.” I dropped to my knees and carefully put the Band-Aid over the mark on her knee. “So how old are you girls?”
“Five.” Luna flexed her knee and smiled.
“Eight,” said Hallie. “I’ll be in third grade this year.”
“And I’m going to be in kindergarten!”
“That’s so exciting!” I stood up and threw away the wrapper. “You have a little brother too, right? And a new baby?”
Hallie and Luna both looked confused. “No,” Luna said. “But we’d like a baby. Or a hamster.”
“I thought I saw your mom with a little boy out front,” I said. “And an infant carseat.”
“Our mom was here?” Hallie questioned, her face scrunching up. Then something clicked. “Oh! That’s not our mom. That’s our Aunt Bree. And the boy is our cousin Peter. Same with the baby. His name is Prescott. He’s only two months old.”
“It’s Daddy’s two days right now,” said Luna.
“He gets us two days a week,” Hallie explained. “Because of the divorce.”
“Oh.” I nodded in understanding, feeling sympathy for them. My mom had taken off when I was younger than Luna. I knew what it was like to be a child of divorced parents. “So just your dad is moving in here?”
“Yes.” Hallie sighed. “And we love our dad, but he’s really grumpy right now because one of the legs on the couch broke and he can’t afford a new one, so he had to find his tools and try to fix it himself. That’s why we didn’t want to ask him for another Band-Aid.”
“He gets grumpy a lot,” Luna added. “And he snores.”
I laughed. “A lot of dads do.”
“He’s also really hairy, and he swears too much,” announced Hallie.
Her little sister confirmed this with a nod. “He says it was because he was a SEAL.”
“Not the kind at Sea World,” Hallie clarified quickly. “The kind that wears a uniform. But he is a very good swimmer.”
“Guess what?” I smiled at them. “My dad was a single dad too, and he also used to swear a lot.”
“Was he a SEAL?” Luna asked.
“No, but he was a Marine,” I said. “And he always told us that once you’re a Marine, you’re always a Marine, so we had to put up with his cursing.”
“Did it make your mom mad?” Hallie wondered. “Our mom gets really mad about it.”
“I don’t think she knew,” I said carefully, “but I had sisters too, and you know what we did?”
“What?” they asked.
“We had a swear jar, and every time he said a bad word, he had to put money in the jar.”
“How much money?” Hallie asked, her dark eyes wide.
I shrugged. “Depends on the swear. Most words were fifty cents.”
“Our dad says the F-word a lot,” whispered Luna, glancing at the cat like she was afraid Piglet’s ears might be offended.
“The F-word was a whole dollar,” I told them.
The sisters exchanged a delighted look.
“And then every month, my sisters and I would take turns choosing where to donate the money. When it was my turn, I always chose an animal charity.”
“Our dad says there’s a pool here,” Hallie said excitedly, off to a new subject with the speed of an eight-year-old. “Do you know where it is?”
“Yes.”
“Can you show us?”
I paused. “Yes, but I think we should wait to ask your dad for permission.”
A vigorous rapping on the aluminum frame of my screen door made us all jump and sent Piglet scurrying back into the pantry.
“I bet that’s Daddy,” Hallie said. “We didn’t tell him we were coming here. He might be mad.”
Flustered, I hurried from the kitchen toward the door, where I could see the imposing masculine silhouette of him through the screen—wide shoulders, thick arms, trim torso. Pushing open the door, I could see he was just as handsome as I’d thought.
And clearly upset.
His dark eyes were clouded with worry, his brow was furrowed, and his jaw was clenched. “Sorry to bother you, but have you seen—”
“Daddy!” Luna came running up the hall with Hallie close behind.
At the sight of his girls, the guy relaxed his shoulders and expression somewhat. “You guys cannot just run off like that. I didn’t know where you were.”
“Sorry,” Luna said contritely. “I needed a new Band-Aid.”