Take This Regret (Take This Regret #1)(38)
Author: A.L. Jackson

I opened the door and stepped out into the warmth of the summer sun.

Elizabeth fol owed me to the doorway to see me out.

“Elizabeth?” I turned to her, pausing on her stoop. This wasn’t an afterthought. It’d been on my mind, weighing on me since last night. “Why didn’t you come back to class?” She still ed as the meaning of my question dawned on her face. Her voice was quiet and cracked when she answered. “I was sick.”

Closing my eyes, I nodded as I rode out the suffocating wave of guilt, and in my shame, I turned and left Elizabeth with no further words.

The preschool was a large, white building with colorful letters splashed across the front and shrubs growing against its wal s. A wrought iron fence painted bright blue encompassed the grounds, and playground equipment fil ed the yard that was protected from the heat by a matching blue sunshade.

At exactly noon, I walked through the door and into the office, feeling a bit out of sorts and nervous. The room was mostly quiet; only the distorted sound of playful children seeped through the thin wal s. The young woman behind the counter asked if she could help me.

“Yes, I’m here to pick up Lizzie Ayers.” Her face lit in recognition. “Oh, yes, we were told to expect you.” She thumbed through a stack of files on her desk and produced a folder with Lizzie’s name on the tab.

She pulled a sheet from it, passed it across to me, and set a pen on top of it. “I just need you to fil this out, and I need your driver’s license for verification.” Most of the form had been fil ed out by Elizabeth, her distinct handwriting adding me to the list of people authorized to pick Lizzie up from school. There was only a smal section where I needed to add my personal information.

My heart palpitated as I realized the huge leap of faith Elizabeth had taken in me.

I now had control of signing my daughter in and out of school.

With a shaky hand, I added the information and passed the form back to the receptionist along with my license.

She looked it over, put up a finger, and said, “Just a minute.”

She made a photocopy, added it to the file, and showed me where to sign out my daughter. Then she led me down the hal to Lizzie’s classroom.

“Daddy!” Lizzie spotted me the second we walked through the door and ran across the room with outstretched arms.

“Hi, sweetheart.” I picked her up and kissed her on the forehead, rocking her as I held her to my chest. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Daddy.”

“Come on, let’s get your things.”

Lizzie showed me her cubby stuffed with her day’s work, proud as she presented me with a picture she’d painted. Although the picture had been drawn with the crudeness of the hand of a five-year-old, the two adults and one child standing hand-in-hand, one with yel ow and two with black hair, made it clear who she’d drawn.

“This is beautiful, Lizzie.” So beautiful.

I helped her wriggle her backpack over the sling she still wore on her arm and then took her good hand and led her out.

“Where to, Lizzie?” I looked at her through the rearview mirror where she was buckled in her booster in the backseat of my car.

“I want pizza!”

Then pizza it was.

Soon we were seated at a round table for two at the smal pizza parlor I’d looked up on my phone. It was the kind of place where the owner cooked in the back while he yel ed orders to his employees up front, a place where a person could order pizza by the slice and sit at tables covered in red and white checked cloths, a place where the intoxicating smel of fresh-baked dough hung in the air.

Lizzie sat on her knees, sipping a clear, bubbly soda through a straw, the two of us conversing about our day.

She told me of the fight between two little boys on the playground, her voice disapproving as she described how they had to sit in time out for the whole recess.

I chuckled and then told her about the board meeting I’d had to sit through the entire morning, leaving out all the boring details and tel ing her how I’d spent the entire time gazing out on the sailboats on the water while thinking of only her.

The server arrived with our food and refil ed our drinks.

The slices of pizza were huge and dripping with grease, and I convinced Lizzie to all ow me to cut it into pieces so she could eat it with a fork rather than trying to balance it with her one good hand.

“Thank-you, Daddy,” she said with a soft expression of appreciation on her face, as I set her plate back in front of her and handed her a fork.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” I smiled as she speared a piece of her cheese pizza and popped it into her mouth. Only then did I turn to wrestle the huge piece in front of me.

We ate in peace for a couple of minutes while I contemplated the best way to bring up a discussion I was certain would be one of the hardest of my life, but one I couldn’t put off any longer.

“Lizzie, honey?”

Grinning, she looked up from her plate and across the table at me.

“Are you happy Daddy’s here . . . now?” Real y, I knew what she would say. I just didn’t know a better way to break into the conversation.

She nodded as she took another bite. “Uh-huh.”

“Did your mom ever talk to you about why I wasn’t with you when you were younger?”

She shrugged one shoulder as if it didn’t matter at all .

“You didn’t want me.”

I wanted to pass out from the dizzying pain her answer brought me. swall owing the lump in my throat, I held onto the table in front of me, forcing myself to speak. “Lizzie, I’m so sorry.” Even if it hadn’t always been the case, even if I’d spent the first five years of her life wondering about her, longing for her, there had been a day I’d believed this child would ruin my life.

“It’s okay, Daddy.”

There was nothing okay about what I’d done, but I accepted it as her way of tel ing me she’d already forgiven me.

I leaned heavily against the table, lowering myself so I could look up at my child’s face. “I need you to know, Lizzie, that as long as I live I wil never leave you again. Do you understand?”

She smiled a simple smile, one of sincerity and trust. “I know that, Daddy.” She grinned and asked if she could have another soda.

It was just after three when I pulled into the spot with my name engraved on a silver plaque in the parking garage of my building. I jammed the up button several times, wil ing the elevator to hurry. I’d been due for another round of board meetings at three o’clock. After spending the hour after lunch at a nearby park, I’d dropped Lizzie off at the smal , one-level house Natalie and Matthew shared. With a smile, Natalie had invited me in. She’d enveloped me in an encouraging embrace when I explained I had to get back to the office.