Part Twenty-two
Sydney strides toward the back door and swings it open; what she sees on the other side stops her dead in her tracks.
Her father sits at the picnic table, Gracie in his lap, facing him. "How's Grampy's little girl?" he coos. "Does Gracie love her Grampy? I think she does! She does!" Grace lets out delighted baby sounds and grins in response.
"Will wonders never cease," Michael murmurs, coming up behind his wife.
"Gracie loves everybody." Sydney does her best to sound dismissive, but she is not, after all, made of stone, and she actually feels herself tearing up a little.
"Should Syd and I wait in here for the pizzas, Jack?" Michael calls.
"No, I told the pizza guy to come around back. Feel free to help yourself to whatever you want to drink, though," Jack says, glancing up from his granddaughter. "There's lemonade and iced tea and I think even a beer or two if you want one, Mike."
"Can we bring you anything?"
"An iced tea, please, if you don't mind."
"I want lemonade, Daddy!" Emily cries from her place playing basketball with her brother. Actually, Sydney suspects that she's mostly getting in the way of her brother playing basketball, but he doesn't seem too thoroughly annoyed yet.
"Say please, sweetheart," Sydney admonishes gently.
"Please!"
"We'll bring both pitchers out," Michael promises.
"Grace's playpen is still set up in the living room, I should grab it, bring it outside," Sydney says.
"I'll get it," Michael says. "If you want to get the drinks."
"You're sure?"
"Uh-huh." They move back into the kitchen, and he leans over to kiss her before starting towards the living room.
"Michael," she says, feeling suddenly choked up for no real reason. Hormones, she supposes.
"Hmm?"
"I love you," she says, biting her lower lip. "Very much."
"I love you, too, sweetheart." He kisses her once more before leaving the room. He has no sooner gone than Sydney hears Gracie begin to wail, and her father appears in the kitchen.
"Could she be hungry?" he asks. "Do you have a bottle?"
"Oh. Yes." Within a few minutes, Sydney's father is sitting in a kitchen chair, giving Grace her bottle while she stares up at him with soulful eyes.
"Emily-- Emily does that sometimes," Sydney blurts out.
Her father looks up at her, a question in his eyes.
"Runs off," she says in a rush. "When we go to visit Michael at the office sometimes, I'll stop for a second to talk to his secretary, and the next thing I know she'll be gone."
"Which is why you have to watch her carefully," her father counters. "I get it, Sydney."
"No, I wasn't saying that to--" Sydney takes a deep breath. This was going all wrong. "She's a good girl," she says quietly. "There's just-- you know-- no making her do anything she doesn't want to do."
"Like her mother."
Sydney bites her lower lip and looks away. "You don't know anything abut me, Dad."
"I did when you were her age," her father responds. "And somehow I don't suspect you've changed that much."
Sydney opens her mouth to respond, but then Michael appears, playpen folded up under his arm. "Oh. Is she going to sleep?" Michael asks, smiling down at his daughter, who sucks drowsily on her bottle. "Maybe I should have left this set up in there, it'll probably be too noisy for her in the backyard."
"It'll be fine," Sydney says. "Grace can sleep through anything."
Grace looks up at her father through half-lidded eyes, smiling sleepily around her bottle and reaching one arm up towards him.
"She loves her daddy," Jack says softly.
"Yeah," Michael says with a smile. "I think she does."
"Why don't you finish feeding her," Jack suggests. "And I'll set up the playpen."
"Thanks, Jack."
Sydney watches as the two men switch places, smiles fondly as Michael smiles down at his daughter. "Hi, sweetie," he whispers. "Daddy loves you."
Sydney and her father slip out with the playpen and pitchers of iced tea and lemonade, returning once for ice and glasses.
"He's good with her," her father comments, as he sets up the playpen and Sydney pours glasses of iced tea and lemonade.
"You're not bad, either," Sydney admits.
"Mommy!" Emily cries. "Watch me do this!" Inexplicably, she throws herself to the ground and rolls herself over in a somersault.
"That's great, sweetheart," Sydney says with a smile.
"You could be a gymnast," her father adds.
Sydney dares a smile at her father. "Michael and I have talked about that," she tells him. "Getting her into some classes, gymnastics, dance, piano. We don't know a lot of kids for her to hang out with in New York, we think it would be a good way for her to meet people. Jack plays on a soccer team, and Michael keeps talking about putting him in peewee hockey next year, but the thought makes me more than a little nervous." She's babbling, and she doesn't know why.
Maybe she thinks the longer she talks, the longer this truce they've seemingly forged will last, and they'll be able to finish this dinner without raised voices and hurt feelings.
