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Penelope smiled at the mother, then asked Emily, “Did I do okay?”

“Yeah, so cool” Emily nodded with a wide smile

Darryl stood flabbergasted Penelope had drawn a cartoon of E tacos He’d never otten so wrong He always thought life was veryPenelope lived in the gray, and he happened to like that spot very ht, she was bringing his he didn’t even knoas , and that he didn’t want to lose

E, so Darryl stepped forward, nudging Penelope’s shoulder, and gestured her out the door He gave the ht out here, leaving theirl When Penelope finally joined him in the hallway, he asked, “You draw?”

She shrugged “I becah school, since you knoas terrible at school”

Darryl chuckled “Luckily for Emily, that was the perfect skill to have today”

She snorted a laugh “If I could only tell my dad now, then he wouldn’t think that my entire education asted”

She sounded flippant, but Darryl assumed there was some truth in there too “Maybe you should tell hi with your time here”

“Maybe” She smiled

Bullshit He could sniff that lie out easily She wasn’t going to tell her dad shit, and Darryl knew enough about her fained they wouldn’t care anyway They didn’t even seem to see Penelope at all from what she’d told him

“So,” she said, changing the subject, “why are we out here?”

He allowed the shift and moved down the hallway to the chai

rs “I always leave for a little while” He took a seat

She dropped down next to him “Why?”

“Because we’re strangers to E back into the cold, hard chair “They’ll be ood for the kid Good for the mom too”