Page 69 of Watching Henry

An allowance. Like a kid. An allowance for undependable, flaky Hadley.

Instinctively, she wanted to say no, knew she should say no. But then, how was she supposed to go back to her old, flaky life without the money to fund her adventures?

It was a heartbeat too long, but in the end she smiled at her father. “Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

“It's only money,” her father grinned. “There are far more important things in life.”

And Hadley knew that there were. But money would just have to fill the hole that the more important things had left.

Chapter Thirty

Florence watched as the twins sprinted down the little lake beach, slipped and slid their way into u-turns, then came all the way back.

“Way to go,” she said, as they arrived back at her feet huffing and puffing, little cheeks red with effort. “Nice work.”

“Now what?” Charlie gasped.

“Now it's reading time,” Florence said. “Come on, everyone get out their reading books and sit in the shade.”

There were groans and moans, but she pretended not to hear them until each child had his or her book and they were settled comfortably on a blanket under the trees.

“Can you read that word?” she asked Emily, pointing at the longest word she could see on the page.

“Refrigerator,” Emily said immediately. “That one was easy.”

“No it's not,” Charlie said.

“Is so,” said Emily.

“Is not.”

“Reading time!” Florence barked.

She wished she hadn't started this now. Wished she hadn't asked and sure as hell wished that the word she'd picked hadn't turned out to be refrigerator.

She wondered just how long a piece of kitchen equipment was going to remind her of a foolish experiment gone wrong.

That's what it all had been, she was telling herself, though whether or not she believed herself was another matter. It was a decent enough explanation. After all, people experimented all the time, didn't they?

And Hadley was gone. Gone without even saying goodbye, which stung every time she tried not to think about it.

Gone after declaring her possible love, said a voice at the back of her head. Which could explain just why she'd run away so fast. But then, that did seem to be Hadley's way, didn't it? Running away from things, not committing, not sticking with what she'd agreed to do. If she'd truly have been falling in love, she'd have stayed, wouldn't she?

Florence was better off this way. She'd done the right thing. She had responsibilities and a career and bills to think of.

She felt her breath hitch as she thought about the money. The debt. She was going to need to get a second job, or she was going to have to win the lottery. Something like that. The one thing she couldn't do was ignore this much longer.

The company had called the house already. How long before they showed up in person?

“This is booo-ring.”

Florence sighed. “Read your book, Henry.”

“No, it's boring.”

“Then choose another.”

“It's not just the book. It's all this. This is boring. You're boring.”