Then Colin put down his fork.
“Why doesn’t anyone ask me?”
I looked at him.
“Ask you what?”
“My office is less than ten minutes from that studio. I can pick her up after school, work from my laptop while she’s in class, and bring her home.”
Tessa stared at him.
“Three times a week?”
Colin smiled. “Unless you become famous and start refusing rides from ordinary people.”
Tessa laughed and threw her arms around him.
I remember feeling relieved more than anything else.
We trusted Colin.
That was the part I would keep returning to later.
We trusted him enough to hand him our daughter and never wonder what was being said during those long drives.
For the first few weeks, Tessa was happier than I had seen her in months.
She would come home starving, drop her bag by the kitchen door, and start talking before I could even put dinner in front of her.
