He caught himself before he went stomping over the rocks. Slowing down enough to be sure of his footing, he worked his way over the volcanic rock, tempering his mood the closer he got. Claire didn’t overreact. His wife wasn’t prone to drama. If something was bothering her, it was real, and it was his job to help her fix it. He’d had different plans for their last hours on the island, but he’d adjust. Her feelings mattered more. She glanced up at him. Tears streaked down her face, and she looked more miserable than the day they’d figured out Bella was teething. Her expression cut straight to his heart, and he crouched next to her, balancing on the jagged rock.
“Claire, sweetheart.” He cupped her face with his hand and swiped at her tears with his thumb. “What’s wrong?”
She leaned into his touch, pressing her cheek against his palm. “I don’t know how to do this. I can’t figure out how to fit it all together.”
He settled the jacket over her shoulders. Picking out a relatively smooth spot, he sat and pulled his knees up in front of him, partly so he didn’t go tumbling off and partly to give himself time to figure out what to say. When they’d started, Claire had been the one to push him to grow emotionally. She’d been the one who called him on his shit and urged him to do better. He wasn’t used to this shift in their roles.
“What makes you think you’re the one who has to figure it all out?”
The look she gave him tempered some of his goodwill, but he managed to hold his tongue and wait for her to speak. Extra points for being a fucking grown-up, he thought.
“Because it’s my stuff. It’s my company and my job that I have to figure out how to balance it with…our daughter.” She caught herself before she said my daughter, but he knew it had been on the tip of her tongue.
“Exactly,” he said, striving for calm and worried he’d come up short. Interesting—he couldn’t remember the last time he got to be the indignant one in any situation. “Bella is our daughter. She’s not yours to parent alone, and she’s not a problem that needs to be solved.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Some of the green he loved flashed in her eyes, and he waited her out, needing her to really see the fault in her thinking. “It isn’t,” she said, more to herself than to him.
Her shoulders slumped, and he broke down and reached for her hand.
“I keep thinking if I just work at it hard enough, that I’ll be able to figure out how to do it all. She’s my baby. I love her. I wasn’t trying to see her as a problem. I want the best for her—she deserves it—and I keep feeling like all I do is fail her. I love her so much. I don’t want to fuck this up.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He brushed a kiss over her knuckles, cold from the early morning chill. “You won’t. You’re not. Our daughter is lucky to have you for her mother. But you have to stop beating yourself up. It isn’t good for any of us.”
“I keep thinking about what it was like when I grew up. My mom was home all the time. She took care of everything my dad and I needed. She sewed patches on my Brownie Scout sash and made sure I had cookies and whatever else I needed for school things. She was waiting every day when I got home from school and I knew without having to even think about it that Dad and I were the most important things in her world. I want Bella to have that kind of security too. I owe it to her.”
“You owe it to our daughter to sew patches on a uniform she might not ever have?” He knew he was oversimplifying, but he was out of his depth.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“You want our daughter to know—without a moment’s doubt—that she’s loved and cherished.”
She nodded and he could see the tears filling her eyes again. Great. He’d been trying to get her to stop crying. He obviously sucked at this.
“Claire, how could she possibly think anything else? We’ve both loved her since the moment we knew she existed. Every day it seems impossible to love her more and every day we do. That’s not going to change because you have a career you love too. You can show her both things.”
He could tell from the look she gave him that she didn’t believe him, but he was also pretty sure she wanted to and that was something he could work with.
“I know the patches thing sounds stupid.” She stared out across the ocean. The waves crashed against the rocks; the roiling water echoed the turmoil just under the surface of their conversation. “But it’s not the same thing if the housekeeper is the one who makes cookies with her. It just isn’t.”
“Of course not,” he said. “But just because it doesn’t look the way it did when you grew up, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Why can’t it be extra love instead of a lack of love?”
He could see her turning that over in her head. Esmeralda had been taking care of his house and running errands for him for years. She’d liked Claire from the moment she moved in and the feeling was mutual. When Bella was born, she was beside herself. Luke didn’t need to remind her that Esmerelda adored their daughter. She was the closest thing Bella had to a grandmother—at least one he’d want her to spend time with.