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Dmitri?”
    He nodded.
    “Okay then, Dmitri. About last night. I just wanted to apologize again for—for—well, for everything.”
    He seemed to relax once more. Sadie decided it must be her friendly personality in control today.
    “I would feel so much better if you’d accept your breakfast on the house this morning as my way of making it up to you.”
    He held up a hand. “That’s really not necessary—”
    “Please.” She smiled as sweetly as she could manage.
    That’s right, Sadie. Honey, not vinegar, remember? Kill him with your kindness and then take him out at the knees. Well, actually, she’d almost succeeded in doing that just yesterday.
    “I’m not usually so…accident-prone,” she explained. “At least not that accident-prone. I just…yesterday was just a bad day.”
    His blue eyes softened with compassion. “I’m sorry to hear that.” His warm voice was so genuine that she felt her heart give a momentary flutter.
    “Yeah, but it’s…” She suddenly felt the need to elaborate. “It’s my father. He sort of abandoned my mom and me when I was a kid, and ever since then, he’s been this kind of off-again/on-again type of figure in my life. And he showed up yesterday, talking about making amends and regrets and God and…” She waved her hands helplessly. “What’re you gonna do, you know?”
    She sighed, but Dmitri actually appeared to be quite interested in her story. She found herself babbling on. “And then the chicken burned, and Kylie wanted pizza, but there were germs in the ball pit, and Kylie’s birthday party is this Saturday, and I needed stuff for the party. So Jasper drove us to the grocery store, and I nearly took off your leg, but Kylie picked the cake design she wants me to duplicate, which requires an insane amount of yellow dye, which will probably stain her intestinal tract permanently , but it’s okay because she only turns five years old once, you know? And I want her to be happy so she can grow up and get into a decent college and have a good life.”
    These words came out in a rush of thought, but Dmitri seemed to be following her just fine, so she went on. “I mean, why is being a mother so hard? Why doesn’t anyone tell you how many things there are to worry about? How did my mom do it? And the thing is that she did it without my father, which is why I was so upset when he showed up yesterday. Who does he think he is to just sail back into town and expect everything to be like old times? And anyway, who said our old times were really all that great?”
    Dmitri blinked several times. “I can see why yesterday must have been difficult.”
    “You have no idea.”
    He frowned. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but are you always this…” He seemed to be looking for a word that wasn’t offensive.
    “Psychotic?” she inserted for him. “I used to think it was just temporary, but Jasper has assured me that after twenty-nine years, it’s probably permanent.”
    Dmitri took a sip of his coffee and proceeded to ask a question that caused Sadie’s jaw to drop.
    “Jasper’s your husband?”
    “ What? No!”
    Now it was Dmitri’s turn to look surprised. He set his coffee cup back down. “Oh. But I thought…well, last night…with your daughter, Kylie. I just assumed…”
    “Oh, no! Jasper is my very best friend in the entire world, but we’ve never been like that .” She abstractly wondered why she made “ that ” sound like such a bad thing. “Jasper is like…well, like…”
    “A brother?” Dmitri attempted to help out.
    She frowned. “Well, no. Not exactly.”
    She’d never thought of Jasper as a brother, strangely enough. He was her best friend. Did it really require further description?
    Dmitri, however, appeared to be very confused.
    “Jas and I were nearly born on the same day. His mom and mine shared a room at the hospital. They were good friends, so we spent a lot of time together growing up. After his mom passed on, my mom