“That’s good,” I said.
“It is.”
“Do you like it?”
Her expression softened.
“I forgot how much I did.”
Owen was asleep in his car seat between us.
By then he was nearly four months old.
The first time he smiled at me, I cried.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way anyone would have noticed if they weren’t looking.
I was sitting on the floor of the small townhouse I had rented after selling my interest in the Belle Meade house to settle part of the divorce.
Owen looked at me.
A tiny open-mouthed smile.
For four seconds, nothing else existed.
Not Tessa.
Not the board.
Not the house.
Not the money.
Just my son recognizing me.
And I understood the terrifying privilege of being remembered by a child.
Consistency became my only defense against the man I was.
When my parenting time began at six, I arrived at five fifty.
