Adrian’s company making decisions he may never have seen.
Someone sending me a photograph.
Someone choosing what truth appeared when.
“I’m tired of that,” I said.
“So am I.”
This time, we agreed without hesitation.
Lily woke at six twenty in the morning and announced that she wanted pancakes.
Not answers.
Not financial records.
Not explanations of why her parents had stopped living together.
Pancakes.
Her hair stood in every direction.
One sock had vanished.
She sat in the middle of the hotel bed holding her rabbit and looked at me with complete faith that breakfast would happen because breakfast always happened.
“Chocolate chips?” she asked.
“You ate chocolate chips yesterday.”
“So?”
I stared at her.
She stared back.
I laughed.
It was the first laugh that felt like mine in weeks.
“Fine. But fruit too.”
“Strawberries.”
“If they have them.”
“They have them.”
“You seem very confident.”
She nodded gravely.
“Hotels have strawberries.”
Apparently four-year-olds possessed international hospitality knowledge I did not.
Twenty minutes later, we were downstairs.
I had expected Adrian to be gone.
Instead, he was sitting at a corner table with Daniel, a laptop open between them and a cup of coffee untouched at his elbow.
He looked worse than he had the night before.
Lily spotted him.
“Airplane Adrian!”
Several people turned.
Adrian closed his eyes.
Daniel hid a smile behind his coffee.
I wanted the floor to open.
Lily ran toward the table.
“Good morning!”
Adrian looked at her.
Then at me.
“Airplane Adrian?”
“She names people by location.”
“I’m afraid to ask what she calls her pediatrician.”
“Sticker Doctor.”
“That’s fair.”
Lily climbed into the chair beside him as though billionaires were simply another category of breakfast companion.
“Are you getting pancakes?”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You should.”
“Why?”
“Hotels have strawberries.”
Adrian looked at me.
“I’m clearly underinformed.”
Something warm moved through my chest.
Dangerously warm.
This was how life tricked people.
Not with grand gestures.
With ordinary moments you hadn’t planned to want.
I sat across from them.
Daniel closed the laptop.
“We have some information.”
My stomach tightened.
Lily looked between us.
“About pancakes?”
“Not yet,” Adrian said solemnly.
I smiled despite myself.
“Let me feed her first.”
“No problem.”
And that was what we did.
For twenty minutes, the mystery waited.
Lily ate pancakes, six strawberries, and exactly one bite of scrambled egg after negotiating the terms as if she were representing a labor union.
