She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 154

(Chase)

Lily has lost her spoon.

She had it for about five minutes. Then she must have dropped it in the sand and somehow buried it.

Now we have the problem all small children eventually have, which is that the spoon she does not need has become the only spoon in the world she wants.

It takes us a few minutes of digging in different areas to find it, but eventually I’m victorious.

"Do you think there’s any chance she’s not going to try and put this in her mouth at some stage?"

Natasha looks at me like I’m crazy, which is honestly well deserved.

"There's a bottle of water in the cool box."

I get up and rinse the spoon.

Lily watches me with the focused tracking of a small person who’s decided I’m the only one in the world capable of solving this problem and would like me to know she’s impressed.

I’m not too dignified to admit it gives me a little thrill of pride.

I hand the spoon back.

She bonks herself on the chin with it inside ten seconds and starts to cry, hurling the spoon across the sand.

"This is a setup," I tell her.

Natasha is laughing at me. Quietly, into Lily's hair, but laughing.

I fetch the spoon, rinse it again, and set it aside on the blanket for when Lily will invariably want it back.

I sit back down.

Natasha has her shoes off.

The Pacific is doing its thing maybe forty feet away, and Lily, who has recovered her dignity, is now sucking on a rice cracker.

I look at the rocks at the south end of the bay.

I’ve found myself staring at them twice already since we got here.

I keep meaning to stop.

I’ve driven this road and parked in this car park.

I’ve been inside Clarice Morton's house with Sonia on my arm, looking out at this bay, and felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up for reasons I couldn’t give a name to at the time.

Today the feeling is louder.

I put my hand on the blanket to steady myself and feel the sand under the surface.

I remember digging my hand into the sand when I was eleven years old and my father had just died. I was soaking wet and crying.

A girl about my age sitting on a rock next to me, hand covering mine, just quietly being there.

As if she knew all about loss and the uselessness of words in the face of it.

Natasha has noticed the way I’m staring at the rocks.

She doesn’t say anything, but she’s watching me carefully without looking directly at me.

I’ve known her long enough now to know that look.

"Natasha."

"Yes."

"Did you come to this beach as a child?"

She doesn’t answer for a beat.

"All the time."

I look at her the way I should have been all along.

Properly, with both eyes, with my brain running, without any of the apparatus I usually keep between me and the world.

She’s older.

But.

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