The pair of headlights caught Dorothea's attention as they appeared through the home office window. A sick feeling filled her throat as Nick stepped out of the backseat and Ivy came bounding into the foyer from the living room.
"Daddy's home! Daddy's home!" The five-year-old squealed as her bare feet met the Anthropologie rug in front of the door. She was bouncing up and down on her sparkly purple-polished toes as she pulled on the handle. "Mommy, open the door! Daddy's here!"
It was a little after eight pm and technically Ivy should've been in bed, but since Nick was coming home and it was summer Dorothea let her stay up and watch Frozen for the fiftieth time. She'd ultimately decided against the whole finding a babysitter and a hotel in the city thing and instead called the body shop and used her Southern charm to have them tow the BMW out of the driveway an hour before they closed. In the end, a missing car seemed like a better situation than Nick coming home after a seven-hour flight to the pink nightmare on the side of it.
"Daddy!" Ivy slipped her skinny body through the barely-open door and jumped into Nick's arms.
Nick put a plastic bag with the words, "Disney Store" printed on it on top of his rolling suitcase and then held her with both arms and spun around. After the third spin, as Ivy dissolved into a fit of giggles, his green eyes briefly met Dorothea's. It wasn't long enough for her to read them, and yet her pulse still quickened nonetheless.
"I missed you, Vee," he said against her tumbling brown hair that really needed to be cut sometime soon. It was at the point where it was getting in her eyes and attracting bits of jelly on a daily basis and no matter what sort of pretty hair tie Dorothea presented her with, she vehemently refused to have it tied up, and so the only option left was going to be a pair of scissors.
"We missed you too. Didn't we, baby girl?" Dorothea said, rubbing her daughter's back.
Ivy nodded against Nick's shoulder, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. But then she turned, and as soon as her eyes landed on the bag they doubled in size. "'Disney'?" she read, looking up at him for confirmation. "Daddy! Does that say 'Disney'?"
Nick's eyes flickered to Dorothea as he smiled, and she felt herself loosen slightly. "I couldn't forget to bring something back for my favorite Disney princess, could I?" he asked.
"I'm not a Disney princess," Ivy stated in a matter-of-fact tone, although she was scrambling down from his arms. "But Mommy is."
Dorothea's mouth opened as she placed her hand against her chest. It was unheard of for her daughter to make such a sweet remark about her so out of the blue. Sometime around when Ivy turned four, their relationship had morphed into one that eerily resembled that of Dorothea and Heather's. Lots of disagreements. Lots of Ivy not liking whatever Dorothea did most likely only because she was her mother. It frustrated Dorothea, but perhaps it was inevitable. Karma was a bitch, after all.
Ivy's shriek echoed across the front lawn as she reached into the bag and pulled out an oddly shaped white stuffed animal. "It's Olaf! Mommy, he got me Olaf!"
As Ivy squeezed the nonexistent life out of it against her chest, Dorothea suddenly realized it was only a matter of seconds before her daughter's bare legs were eaten alive by mosquitoes and ushered her into the foyer. "Wow, that was so nice of Daddy, wasn't it?"
Ivy threw her arms around Nick's legs as he entered the house. "Best Daddy ever."
Dorothea laughed as Nick was about to hug her back, but Ivy tore away from him and skipped towards the living room, tossing the stuffed animal in the air. She then looked at Nick, but his expression was flat.
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sweet like honey | taylor swift
Fanfiction"I'll sue you for slander." "Well, that would prove my point, wouldn't it?" IN WHICH - Dorothea Madison is a wife and mother who is supposedly living her dream life in The Lakes, an Upstate New York suburb known for its nature and happy people. She...