He knew for a fact that several of the girls’ mothers on Katie’s dance team fell into this category. Like Molly Montgomery, for instance. Not that she had any children—he knew this, because, God help him, he’d found a little time to google her and discovered her social media page (she had only one). He’d learned from it that she was completely devoted to her job as a children’s librarian. Or at least that’s what he assumed since she only posted pictures of books and links related to books, libraries, and reading. There were no photos of herself—no selfies that some women seemed to love so much—and not a single photo of whoever had given her the ring that was now gone from her left hand.
This, he felt, was a good sign. Of what, he wasn’t sure.
“And how about the girls who don’t have mothers?” he asked. “Or who have two dads? Or whose mothers can’t dance? What if there’s a girl who has a mother like me, who has two left feet?” He did a fumbling step-ball-change, attempting to lighten the mood. “Are they gonna make those moms perform anyway?”
Katie did not crack a smile. “Of course they aren’t. People like Leila’s mom, who runs her own restaurant, or Sharmaine’s mom, who’s a surgeon, or Kayla’s mom, who just had a baby—obviously no one expects their moms to participate. We have some of the old Snappettes alumni coming back to take their places. It’s fine. We’ll be fine. Except—”
He saw those blue eyes he loved so much fill with tears. It was exactly as he’d feared. Something was wrong.
“Except what, sweetheart?” He reached out to brush back a soft lock of her dark hair as she bent her head.
“Except I asked Mom if she would dance with us, and she said no. She’d just make a donation.”
He’d known this was coming, of course. Of course she’d already asked Christina, and of course Christina had said no. What else could Christina say? She had a thriving design business back on the mainland. It took three hours—and that was in good traffic—to drive to Little Bridge, and another three hours to get back. She couldn’t spend that much time driving back and forth for twelve weeks of rehearsals, several times a week.
And for what? A fundraiser? It was simpler to send a check. Which is what practical, level-headed Christina had very sensibly offered to do instead—especially considering how much they’d already paid for all of Katie’s dance gear and choreography fees, which was nearing a thousand dollars for the year so far.
“But that isn’t the point,” Katie explained to John, who’d wrapped his arms around his daughter, pulling her in for a big bear hug as she sobbed. “It isn’t about the m-money!”
“I know,” he said into her hair as he patted and rocked her. “I know. But we’ve talked about this before. You’re mother just isn’t—”
“—that maternal.” Katie pushed away from him and wiped her eyes. “I know. She’s never been like other moms. She loves me, but in her own way.”
John looked down at his daughter’s wounded face and wished there was something he could say that would make the hurt go away, but he knew that there wasn’t. Lord knows he’d spent enough time in marriage counseling with Christina to learn that she’d given all she could to the two of them, and that the offer to run for sheriff of Little Bridge had been the best thing ever to happen, as it had given them both the chance to make a clean break—from one another.
“But,” Katie said, pulling her phone from her back pocket—it was never far from her—and studying her reflection in it to see how much damage the tears had done to her eyeliner, “Mom not wanting to be in it isn’t a total loss. It kind of gave me an idea.”
“Oh?” John examined his beer bottle. If he was careful, there was enough left in it to get him through dinner. “What’s that?”
“Well, I think the whole mother-daughter dance thing is kind of sexist, anyway. I mean, it’s so done, you know?”
“Yeah, I agree. What do they think, women don’t have jobs?” His thoughts wandered, once again, to the pretty librarian he’d met earlier in the day. What would Molly Montgomery have to say about the idea of a mother-daughter dance? Plenty, he imagined. She certainly had plenty to say about every other subject, especially his job and how he performed it, which according to her was not very well.
The bell on the timer chimed in the kitchen, letting them know that the chicken was ready. Katie sprang to her feet to pull it from the oven, suddenly joyous again. John occasionally envied teenagers and their ability to swing from the pits of sorrow to the heights of happiness in mere seconds.
“Well, I started thinking: Why does it have to be a mother-daughter dance, anyway?” Katie asked from the kitchen. “Just because traditionally the Snappettes have always been female. But why can’t there be a male Snappette? There’s no rule that says there can’t be.”
John nodded at this, absently peeling away the label on his beer bottle. “Did you know that President George W. Bush was a cheerleader?” he asked. “And so was Eisenhower. And Samuel L. Jackson.” He wondered if Molly Montgomery knew this. Probably she did, because she was a librarian. He wondered why he cared so much what Molly knew. He doubted she’d given him a second thought, except to curse him, maybe. She had definitely not looked up his social media. Not that he had any, except the departmental sheriff’s account that Marguerite ran. “Many great men in our history have been male cheerleaders.”
“I keep telling you, the Snappettes are dancers, not cheerleaders, Daddy.” Katie came out of the kitchen with a large platter of delicious-smelling chicken in her oven-mitted hands. “So my idea is that, in cases where a mom can’t, for whatever reason, be in the mother-daughter dance, then dads should be allowed to fill their place.”
John eyed the gently steaming pile of chicken. Legs and thighs were his favorite, and there were plenty of these, each browned to perfection and oozing their juices on the platter before him.
“That’s a great idea, honey,” he said, inhaling the savory scent of the chicken. “You should totally do it. Now, why don’t you sit down and eat with me before this chicken gets cold?”
“Really, Daddy?” Katie slid into her favorite chair, beaming. “You mean it?”
“Of course I mean it. You make the best chicken on this island.”
“No, I mean, you’ll be in the Snappettes mother-daughter dance in Mom’s place? You know everyone would love it—you being the sheriff and all—and it would be a great thing, proving how sexist the whole thing is. And it would raise a ton of money—”
John spat out the swig of beer he’d taken, which was unfortunate, since it was the last of the beer from the bottle.
“Daddy?” Katie asked. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” he said, in a tone he hoped sounded convincing.
“So does that mean you’ll do it?”
He gave her a wan smile as he rose from his chair. “Of course I’ll do it. Anything for you, honey.”
“Then where are you going?”
“Just to the fridge.”
Molly Montgomery was going to see him onstage with the Snappettes. He might as well have another beer.
Chapter Five
Molly
If Molly felt like the morning after she’d found an abandoned baby in one of the old library’s public bathrooms started out a little too well, it was because . . . well, it did.
Molly had stayed up even later than usual the night before—without having had to, as there were no late check-ins expected at the Lazy Parrot—and logged on to the Little Bridge Island Facebook community page, where she carefully corrected all the miscommunications about the baby who had been found.
As the person who’d discovered the baby, Molly felt she was the one most qualified to attest not only to the infant’s correct sex, but also to the exact manner in which she had been found.
So she posted that it was most definitely a little girl, not a boy, who’d been found on the toilet—in a box, not a bag—and that she was a lovely little thing who deserved to be kept in everyone’s thoughts, and not referred to as a trash-bag baby.
Furthermore, Molly wrote, rising to flights of fancy that might not have occurred to her had she not finished off the better part of the bottle of wine Joanne had opened, it struck me as if this beautiful baby girl were rising from the waters of Little Bridge much in the way that the Roman goddess of love, Aphrodite, rose from the waves of the sea. Thus I believe that we should call this sweet little baby Aphrodite, because not only did she rise from the sea, but as residents of this island paradise, don’t we all wish her nothing but love? Yours very sincerely, Molly Montgomery, Children’s Library Specialist
Sitting back after posting this, Molly watched in satisfaction as the likes began to pour in, slowly at first, then more and more quickly.
Perfect. Her job was done. The baby’s new name—and a fine one it was; she’d have to thank Mr. Filmore later for the inspiration—was fixed. Aphrodite it would be from now on. A little highfalutin for a tiny baby, but much better than Trash Bag!