"Let's go for a drive."

The jingle of car keys fills your ears as Tashi twirls them around her finger, brow raised questioningly. You'd been silent the moment your family left after dinner, your gaze vacant as you put away the leftovers on autopilot. Tashi doesn't wait for your answer and instead comes to your side. "Lily'll be fine. We won't be gone long."

The mention of your daughter sleeping upstairs seems to rouse you from your mind, but she's still talking. "She'll be fine, come on." There's no room to protest as Tashi's already pulling you to the garage.

Even if she doesn't show it openly, Tashi hates when you get like this— quiet, withdrawn, small — and it's all because of your damn family. It'd been a long dinner with her abrasive in-laws full of negative comments about how you both parent Lily while they hardly paid her any mind. If she can hardly stomach being in their presence for one measly meal, how had you managed to do it all your life?

"You're okay," Tashi coaxes, already knowing where your head's at as the Aston Martin exits the driveway and enters the street. "Your parents wouldn't know kindness if it was sitting in front of them."

They're not good parents, but you are, and Tashi spends every second she has making sure you know it. If she's not on the road with Art or running the foundation, she's glued to you and Lily. Trips to the park, going out to dinner, or vacations if she can scrounge up a free week to disconnect fully. But in moments like these, she's grateful that a simple drive around the block is enough to bring you back to her. Normally, you'd be inconsolable; worried that you might be treating Lily the same way your parents treated you.

Tashi rests her hand atop your thigh as the car turns, meeting your eye when you finally look her way. "Forget tonight, okay?" she says gently. "We're raising her right— you're raising her right. You're nothing like them."

The apple couldn't have fallen farther from the tree if it tried. If only you could see it.