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Pretty. Too pretty. He’d never get any work done if she was around.
“You’ve done a great job teaching Nia to read,” she said. “You should be proud.”
“The praise belongs to her. She learns quickly.”
Nia touched Susannah’s necklace. “Why is your ring here?”
“Because I outgrew it. My mother gave it to me when I was a little girl about your age. When it wouldn’t fit anymore I put it on this chain so I could still wear it.”
“The blue rock is pretty.”
“That’s a sapphire, my birthstone. I used to believe the ring was magic and would give me courage.”
Nia wanted to slip it on, but Ryan told her she couldn’t. He was afraid she’d break the slender chain.
“Can we read another book?” she asked Susannah.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I need to be going. I enjoyed having you read this one to me, though. I don’t think I’ve ever met a little girl who reads as well as you do.”
“When will you be back?”
“Well…” She appealed to Ryan for help explaining.
“Susannah has to go home, Nia,” he told his daughter. “She won’t be back because she doesn’t live around here.”
Nia wrinkled up her face, confused. “Where do you live?”
“I used to have a house in a state called Georgia, right below this one, but I don’t anymore. I sold it because I wanted to sleep in different places, to travel and see new things.”
“Sleep here.”
“No, I can’t do that.”
“Daddy can tuck you in. You said you don’t got nobody to tuck you in.”
His gaze met Susannah’s and her pale complexion flushed slightly.
“I can’t stay, Nia.”
“He gets the covers just right and everything. Please, please?”
“Nia,” Ryan warned. “Don’t pester Susannah. She’s already told you she has to go.”
“But I don’t want her to.” She slammed the book on the table, crossed her arms in defiance and stuck out her bottom lip. Her eyes narrowed.
“Nia,” Ryan warned in a low voice.
Instead of apologizing, she knocked the book to the floor.
He ordered her to go to her room until she could behave better. She climbed off Susannah’s lap and stomped down the hall in her socks, smacking her fist loudly against the wall because she couldn’t make any noise with her feet. He made her come back and return the book to the table.
“Don’t leave that room until I tell you to, young lady.”
“You don’t love me,” she spat.
He knew she didn’t believe it, but the words still broke his heart.
“I love you more than anything in this world, but I don’t like being around you when you act like this. Tell Susannah goodbye and that you’re sorry for being so naughty.”
He wasn’t sure she’d do it, but she finally whispered it through her tears. She ran off to her bedroom.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “She’s had a rough time lately. Normally she’s a great kid.”
“Did your wife die recently?”
“Carla wasn’t my wife, only Nia’s mother,” he felt compelled to explain for some reason. “She died in March, not long after being diagnosed.”
“Stomach cancer? I believe that’s what Nia said.”
“Actually it was her pancreas, but Nia calls it stomach. She’s had trouble dealing with her mother’s death, although Carla lived abroad and never had custody of her.”
“I lost my mother last year, so I know some of what she’s feeling. Healing takes time.” Her expression turned sad. “I don’t think it’s possible for a child, regardless of age, to ever completely get over losing a parent.”
“Was your mother’s death from illness or accident?”
“Complications from Alzheimer’s.”
“I’ve heard that’s really hard on a family. Emotionally. Financially. Physically.”
“Hard doesn’t even begin to describe it. Luckily my dad had done well in the plumbing business, and he and my mom invested wisely. Money wasn’t a problem until the last couple of years of her life. The physical part, though, was very difficult.”
“And the emotional part?”
“Devastating.”
“How long was she ill?”
“Nine years.”
“Damn! How did you deal with it?”
“Not easily, and probably not with much grace, but when you’re in that kind of situation you do what you have to and hope it’s enough. By the end of her life, my mother no longer knew who I was and had become abusive. That was really hard. She’d been a gentle, lovely person before, and the disease changed her.”
“Is that the personal problem you mentioned, the one that caused you to leave school?”
“Yes. She needed me at home. I was all she had.”
“Where was your dad?”
“Dad died of a heart attack when I was four. All I remember about him was that he had a loud laugh and kept butterscotch candies in his pockets for me. Growing up, it was just me and Mom.”
“No brothers or sisters?”
She shook her head. “My parents didn’t think they could have children. They’d tried for nearly twenty years without success and were resigned to being childless, and then, surprise! When my mom was forty-two and my dad forty-eight, she suddenly found herself pregnant.”
“Were you and your mom close?”
“Very close.” Her voice trembled. “She was my best friend. Watching her slowly die was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
He’d judged her too quickly. He’d assumed her to be flighty and irresponsible, but that didn’t mesh with the portrait now forming—a daughter who had loved her mother and been willing to give up her dreams to take care of her.
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