Tallulah brought her hand up to my beard and started to sift her fingers through it, playing quietly so I let her do it.
All the while my eyes stayed on Tally and the woman crying.
I couldn’t imagine how that felt, but I realized rather quickly that it was likely Hadley was suffering from postpartum depression.
Most cases only lasted a few months after childbirth while the mother’s hormone levels slowly returned to normal. But there were some extreme cases where it lasted longer, sometimes years.
And to have lost a child on top of that would definitely push an already depressed person over the edge.
Hadley’s depression clearly was on the very extreme end of the scale, and probably even crossed over into psychotic.
The rest of their discussion consisted of more accusations from Hadley of non-existent wrongdoings on Tally’s part.
Apparently, Tally lorded the fact that she had a child over Hadley’s head, purposefully making her life worse. Then Tally had the nerve to get better grades in nursing school, in some convoluted plan that existed only in Hadley’s head where Tally was trying to make Hadley’s life more difficult.
Each time Tally performed better than Hadley on a test or asked Hadley for help with Tallulah, Hadley would then try to plot her murder, luckily coming to her senses just in time.
Luckily.
One heart attack-inducing hour later, Tally finally made her way out of the room.
She came out into the hallway, and immediately started towards me where I was standing with Tallulah, who still was playing with my beard—yanking, pulling, and smoothing.
“That was bad,” she admitted the moment she was close enough.
I nodded and pulled her into the room where I’d been.
Tally’s eyes went to the window and she stiffened.
“She gained weight while I was pregnant. I knew she was hiding something, but with everything I had on my plate, I just didn’t have time to examine it closer. Whatever was wrong seemed to go away when we returned to school for the second semester. She was the same old Hadley, only a little wilder. God, how could I have missed that? I was an awful friend.”
I placed Tallulah on the chair next to us, handed her my phone once again and then turned to Tally.
“You need to stop,” I ordered her. “You had no control over any of that. The lines of communication were open. You could’ve just as easily hidden Tallulah and your pregnancy, but you didn’t. You chose to let everyone know. She, however, didn’t and that was her choice, her decision. And unless she feels like telling you why she made the choice to keep it a secret, you’ll never know. So just stop beating yourself up about it, it isn’t help…”
I looked over when I heard my phone hit the floor.
Then my breathing stalled in my chest when I saw Tallulah toddling wobbly away from us.
It was the cutest—and scariest—thing I’d ever seen.
“Is she…”
“She’s walking,” Tally breathed. “Oh, my God.”
Tallulah walked over to Big Papa and tugged on his pant leg.
Big Papa picked her up, snuggling her against his chest, and continued the conversation he was having with the prosecutor.
All the while Tally and I sat there stunned.
“Oh, my God,” Tally repeated.
A wide, proud smile overtook my face. “Always a ray of sunshine, our girl.”
Tally’s eyes left her child and came back to me.
“You mean that?”
“Mean what?” I whispered.
“That she’s your girl.”
I nodded my head. “I love her, she’s mine just like her mother.”
Tears instantly formed in Tally’s eyes. “That’s one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard in my life,” she admitted.
I pulled her into the curve of my arms and dropped a kiss on her hair.
“You’re one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. You and that little girl mean the world to me,” I whispered roughly.
Tally’s arms tightened around me, but no more words needed to be said.
We were both feeling them.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt like my life was exactly where it needed to be.
Epilogue
Eyes off my mommy, my daddy is psycho.
-Toddler T-shirt
Tommy
Year one
“No,” I shook my head emphatically. “She’s too young to be starting gymnastics. Her asthma could flare up, and where will we be? At work, that’s where. This isn’t happening.”
Tally gave me a considering look.
“She’s almost two. She’s not going to be doing anything more strenuous than a toddler’s tumbling class, Tommy. It’s something that I trust her teacher to take her to, someone, I’d like to remind you, that you personally went to meet beforehand. If you don’t let her go, then she’ll be the only little girl in her class sitting there on the sideline…crying...while the others are taking the class, and you know how you get when she cries.”
I growled in frustration.
“Fine,” I snapped. “But I’m going to be there for the first few—or four—classes.”
She held up her hands in acquiescence.
I narrowed my eyes, pointed one finger at her, and snatched up my bagel.
“Let’s go or we’re going to be late.”
She sighed and followed me, picking up Tallulah’s lunch from the kitchen counter while I bent down and scooped up Tallulah.
“Ready, Freddy?” I teased my girl.
“Yes, Daddy.”
My heart swelled, just like it did every single time she called me Daddy.
The first time she had called me that, I’d gotten so overwhelmed that I’d had to take a breather outside.
It hadn’t helped matters that it was her first word and she said it in the middle of a club function, either.
“What do you want to do for her second birthday?” Tally asked as she walked with me out the door. “I need to start planning, or we’ll be running around like chickens with our heads cut off like we did last year.”
I snorted.
That’d been an experience.
It’d been the first ever party that we’d had with Judge Slater and, according to him, The Band of Rejects, as he had dubbed our club. It’d been quite comical to have the judge’s snooty friends in the same room with men like Ghost and Truth, who honestly didn’t give that first fuck what anyone else thought about them.
At least I had a hint of decorum.
Those guys, however, did not, and they didn’t care one way or the other about it.
“I was thinking we’d have another party out here like we did last year,” I skirted around the edge of the truck and deposited Tallulah in her car seat. “Be good, baby.”
“Good, baby,” Tallulah chirped.
Grinning, I tapped her nose, smothered her with a few kisses, and closed the door on her excited snickers.
“I’ll see you after work, honey,” I murmured. “You sure you’re up to going by yourself today?”
She nodded her head. “Positive.”
Knowing that she wouldn’t take sympathy from me, I pulled her in for a quick kiss, which morphed into more when she lifted one leg to curl an ankle around my behind.
I pressed her into the side of her new 4-Runner, grinding my unsurprisingly hard cock into her heat for a few long moments before I tore my mouth from hers.