The kitchen door opened and Babette stumbled in, crashing into Thornton.
“Thornton!” she said. “You left me in the car!”
Babette, on the other hand, was a different story. Her courtship with Thornton had been a bit of a whirlwind and I knew the kids had felt like she’d been forced down their throats. She was loud and boisterous and according to the kids, not terribly kind with her words toward yours truly. I assured them that maybe she was trying to find her role in this new family they’d put together, but I’d immediately been on guard with her. I’d been met with a cold shoulder anytime I’d made an overture to her in the past year and I’d finally stopped trying. I was careful to keep my opinion of her from the kids, but I had yet to figure out what Thornton was doing with her. She treated him like he was an idiot, she hadn’t been able to hold down a job, and she regularly failed to show at any of the kids’ activities. I hadn’t been able to figure her out.
“I didn’t think you were coming in,” Thornton mumbled. “You said you didn’t want to come in and—”
“I did not!” she screeched, slapping his shoulder. She noticed me standing in the dining room. “Oh. Hello, Daisy.”
“Babette,” I said, smiling.
She brushed at her blond hair. It was cut short, like something you’d see in a magazine, all angles and waves. Only it didn’t look quite right, like she’d missed the finishing piece. The bangs swung down across her eyes and she swatted at them again. Big silver hoops dangled from her earlobes and her short, squat nose was red from the cold. She wore an oversized pink sweater and jeans that were two sizes too small and not flattering on her pear-shaped figure. Her brown boots were caked in mud… mud that was now all over my kitchen floor.
“Okay, you guys ready?” I asked.
The kids responded with low volume assent.
“We’re going to have so much fun!” Babette screeched. “Your dad has so many surprises for you!”
Thornton looked at her and I surmised that the surprises were also a surprise to him.
“Well, I’ve got a ton of homework,” Emily said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “So we can’t be gone all weekend. I have to write a paper for my history class.”
“History?” Thornton asked. “What are you studying?”
“The past,” she said, shooting him one of her death glares.
“Em,” I said, giving her a glare of my own.
She sighed. “Something about economics. The history of the banking system.”
“I used to work in a bank,” Babette said with a huge smile. “I’ll bet I could help you bunches!”
Emily’s gaze flew to me and we both bit back smiles. It was a running joke. Not only had she not been able to hold a job, but according to the kids, she’d also tried out nearly every job known to man. And she always made mention of them.
I gave her a small head shake, then hugged each of them. Emily and Will hustled out the door but Grace took her time, gathering her things, always the last one to leave, saying goodbye multiple times before she finally exited.
Thornton and Babette, though, stood awkwardly in the kitchen. Thornton had his hand stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and Babette was fussing with her hair.
“I think they’ve got everything,” I said, unsure as to why they were still in my house when all three kids were already in the car. “Let me know if they forgot anything. Jake and I should be around all weekend.”
Babette elbowed Thornton in the side and he winced.
“Uh, right, okay,” he said. “Hey, uh, we wanted to, uh, ask you about the play. That Grace is in.”
“Sophie’s in it, too,” I reminded him. “Didn’t I email you all of the dates and times and info?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got that,” he said, his eyes flitting between Babette and me. “Uh, we heard about the girl that got kidnapped.”
“Well, no one really knows what actually happened to her yet.”
“My friend, Myra, told me that it’s definitely a kidnapping,” Babette said, her eyes wide. She nodded her head, as if affirming this knowledge to herself. “She knows someone who’s also in the play.”
“I just talked to the police this morning,” I told her. “They aren’t sure what happened to her. So I’m not sure where that information came from.”
She pursed her lips and looked at Thornton.
He cleared his throat. “Well, um, yeah. Whatever happened, it sounds like it’s kind of dangerous over there right now.”
“Dangerous?” I repeated, arching my eyebrows.
“Well, if people are being kidnapped, that doesn’t seem like the safest thing.”
My temple began to throb. “I just told you,” I said slowly, as if I were speaking to an eight-year-old and not the father of my children. “No one knows what happened to Amanda or where she is. No one walked into the theater and put a gun to her head and walked her out. No matter what you heard.”
“Right,” he mumbled. He glanced at Babette and she frowned and nodded her head again. “But we were wondering if maybe it might be best if she dropped out of the play.”
I took a deep breath. Since our divorce, Thornton had awkwardly at times tried to act like a parent. But he genuinely didn’t know how to be one. When we were married, he worked long hours and was rarely at home and when he was, he wanted to do his own thing. So the kids had been my job. I’d resented it for years, but when we’d divorced, I realized I was in a fortunate position. The kids knew me as the parent. The kids had come to see Jake as a parent. But they didn’t have the same impression of Thornton. So when he, for whatever reason, decided to attempt to wade into the parenting waters, it nearly always rubbed me the wrong way.
“Neither Grace nor Sophie are dropping out of the play,” I told them. “Jake or I have been at nearly every rehearsal and we know a good portion of the parents and families in the play. Whatever happened to Amanda is a personal thing. It wasn’t random.”
“You don’t know that,” Babette said, folding her arms across her chest. She pursed her lips. “And we don’t think it’s a wise choice to put our daughter in danger.”
The throbbing in my temple picked up pace. I took another deep breath. “I appreciate your concern, but both girls are fine and will continue in the play.” I looked at Babette. “And if you so much as mention the idea that it might be dangerous for them to be in the play while they are with you this weekend, I’ll make sure that you are barred from the theater during the productions.” I smiled. “Just to keep you safe.”
“No, we just—” Thornton stumbled.
I held up my hand. “Just stop. Anytime we go near this kind of stuff, it goes poorly. They live with me. I make the decisions about their lives. That was the deal. You haven’t spent a second in the theater at a rehearsal or an information session or anything else, even though you were absolutely welcome to attend.” I paused. “So don’t come in here with an opinion formed on something you heard from some random person.”
Babette sniffed and lifted her chin. “It wasn’t a random person. It was someone who is friends with someone I know.”
“So, third-hand,” I said. “Yeah, that’s not going to influence me in any way.”
“And to be fair, I would’ve been there, but we’ve been pretty busy with the band,” Thornton said.
“We would’ve been there,” Babette snapped at him.
They were both in a band that featured Babette as the lead singer. Thornton’s lifelong dream had been to make it as a musician and he’d been trying ever since I’d met him, rotating through different bands. Now, he and Babette had bonded over their shared passion of music.
“We finally got a gig,” Thornton said. “We’re playing at the feed store.”
“The feed store?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “They’re gonna do a grand re-opening. It burned down last year and they finally got it rebuilt and they’re doing this big re-opening thing and they asked us to play. So rehearsals have been intense.”