Chapter Text
"Stop!" Rey pointed to the rug in front of the foyer door. "Boots off," she reminded her daughter before she could get too far into the house. Luckily, it wasn't raining today, so Rey didn't have to worry about cleaning up a muddy mess, but she still didn't want dirt and grit dragged all around the house.
7 year old Bailey stomped back to the door, looking so like her father, though her favorite bright red rain boots were a colorfully stark contrast to Ben Solo's personality. He had been all blacks and grays with a touch of blue, but when he smiled? It was a smile that could light up the entire world, but over the course of his and Rey's relationship, the blacks and grays consumed him until there was little smile left.
"But Mommmyyyyyy!" The little girl complained. "I have to show you something right now!"
Rey blinked away her memories and silently held out a hand, waiting to take the boots so she could set them neatly by the door. Once free of outdoor footwear, Bailey ran into the kitchen. Impatience, another attribute that could have only come from her father.
"What has you so excited today?" Rey followed her with a chuckle. Something exciting must have happened in school. Maybe an art project or a raving review on improved penmanship, the latter a continued obstacle for the young girl.
Bailey was kneeling on a chair, digging through her red backpack in front of her on the round wood dining table. She took out a slightly crinkled paper and waved it in her mother's face. Rey curiously took it, the three biggest words typed out elegantly in gold making her heart drop: Daddy Daughter Dance. Maybe Finn–
"Oh, Mommy!" Her intuitive daughter sensing something wrong leaned forward to wrap her arms around Rey's middle. "Maisie said I can go with her and her daddy!" Bailey spoke with the conviction of someone with an obviously simple solution to a far from simple problem.
"Um," Rey swallowed a lump in her throat. She had never met Maisie's father. Actually, she had yet to meet Maisie since moving here only a month ago. Maisie... Her heart dropped even further at the mention of Bailey's new best friend. A piece of Rey's heart would always belong to another Maisie, a twin piece of Bailey she had left with Ben years ago when they divorced not long after their birth. She could not afford even the shortest trip down that memory lane right now. Her Maisie was currently in the city, exactly where Ben had wanted to be.
But Bailey had already moved on from the topic of fathers, doodling hearts and what suspiciously looked like two parents with two girls in her spelling homework notebook. So still on fathers then. "We want to get the same dresses and paint our nails pink and can Maisie go to the salon with us?" She colored in a heart with a red crayon and zero cares. "She doesn't have a mommy."
"Oh!" Rey didn't know what to say. Or think. She forgot how to breathe. "Well... umm... I would need to talk to her father first. Maybe after school."
"Maisie takes the bus."
Rey looked to the ceiling for answers that were not there. The busses would be heading out before car pickup time so she couldn't even talk to Maisie herself and ask for her father's phone number. So that's how Rey found herself meeting with her daughter's teacher the next day after school.
"I'm sorry, Miss Solo," Miss Connix looked apologetic, "Maisie isn't in my class, but..." she got up and poked her head out the open door and whistled. "Rose! ROSE TICO!" she looked back to Rey. "Excuse me."
Once the teacher had left, Rey turned around to her daughter who was sitting by the bookshelf in the back flipping through a book. "Bailey, why didn't you tell me your friend was in a different class?"
Bailey shrugged. Add that to the list of things she got from her father.
"She's in Rose's class," Miss Connix announced when she came back a few minutes later. "I gave Rose your contact info and she's going to pass it along to the father. In the meantime," she sat in her chair and folded her hands across her desk. "The dance needs parent volunteers. We get a lot of single mothers every year who use it as a way to go with their daughters. I would hate for Bailey to miss it."
"I suppose..."
"Shall I add you to our sign up list, Miss Solo?"
"Yes but just Rey, please... Solo was my married name and I never got around to changing it and with Bailey–"
"Alright, just Rey!" Miss Connix interrupted with a click of her computer mouse. "You're in! You'll get an email with all the details."
"Ok. Thank you, Miss Connix." Rey stood, ready to leave.
"Please, call me Kaydel."
Rey nodded with a polite smile then turned to her daughter. "Bailey, time to go!"
"Bye, Miss Connix!" Bailey ran to the door with an enthusiastic wave. "Can I go to the dance with Maisie, Mommy?"
Rey took her hand as they walked to the car. "I need to talk to her father first, but..." She opened the back door of the car. "Mommy's going to volunteer so you can always dance with me!"
"And Maisie!"
"And Maisie," Rey agreed, closing the door and sliding into the driver's seat.
"And Maisie's daddy!"
Maisie's daddy... Rey hadn't heard from the mystery man for the last couple days now. She wouldn't care except she didn't want her daughter to be disappointed. Couldn't the school have a simple Valentine dance? Did it have to specify daddies and daughters?
"Bailey?" Rey called, tapping her sauce spoon on the end of the pot. "Dinner!" She plated the spaghetti and set it on the table, but there was no pitter patter of little feet running into the kitchen to be heard. "Bailey?" Rey called again, going into the family room where she sent her daughter to look through a box of family photos for her school family show and tell project.
The boxes on the bookshelf remained untouched.
And no Bailey in sight.
After hearing a thud from the ceiling above, Rey's feet carried her upstairs past Bailey's empty bedroom and into her own where she found Bailey on the floor by the closet holding something in her hands. A photograph, Rey noticed as she got closer, and a chair missing in the corner because it had been dragged inside the closet, a box spilled over next to it on the floor.
"Sweetie," Rey knelt next to her, "this isn't the box I told you to get."
"Is this my daddy?" Bailey ignored the gentle reprimand and held up the photo.
A man grinning from ear to ear at the camera, a tiny newborn cradled in his arms. Ben and Bailey's twin Maisie. Rey remembers taking it. She carefully started putting the other photos back in the box, feeling grateful that Bailey didn't notice the second photo taken directly after when Leia placed a second baby in Ben's arms.
"Mommy?"
"Hmm?" Rey closed the box, not at all ready for this. "Yes, sweetie. That's your daddy."
Bailey gasped. "And that's me! I was so tiny! Mommy, can I use this?"
Rey nodded. "Put it carefully in your folder. Dinner is ready."
Bailey hopped up with a squeal before she ran out of the room, her feet pounding down the stairs in that unique childhood excitement.
Rey sighed and stood, putting the box back on the top closet shelf and then dragged her chair back to the corner. She couldn't think about the other photos in that box just yet, but that night before bedtime, she helped Bailey pick some photos from the other photo box in the family room.
"Sweetie," Rey started, watching her daughter try to decide between a photo of Uncle Finn dressed as Prince Charming with Bailey as Captain Marvel on Halloween and one of them at karate class, "I don't want you disappointed if you can't go to this dance with your friend's daddy."
Bailey nodded to herself, choosing the karate photo from her last belt promotion. "He'll be there."
"I'm sure he will, but with your friend. Mommy will be there and maybe Uncle Finn–"
"You think Maisie's daddy won't dance with me?" Bailey brought out a frown.
"I didn't say that–"
"Because her daddy is a daddy. I love Uncle Finn, but he's not a daddy."
A bit of innocent blunt honesty, but true.
"Sweetie," Rey tried again, "Mommy can't send you to a dance with a stranger."
"Oh." Bailey's frown flipped around. "You can meet him there! And then he'll dance with me."
That would have to be good enough. "Let's clean this up and get ready for bed."
Rey had faceplanted onto her bed, thoroughly physically and mentally exhausted, when his message came in:
"Is he here?" Rey rushed out, the bell above the cafe door ringing as she hurried to the counter. "Mom!"
"No one has asked for you, honey bun," Maz answered calmly as she refilled ketchup bottles. "At least I don't think so. You never gave me a name."
Rey slumped onto a stool. "I... I don't have one." In hindsight, she probably should have asked.
"Or a description."
"I didn't think–"
"IS MAISIE'S DAD HERE?!" Maz yelled out, earning a few startled looks from some customers, but no Maisie's dad.
"Jesus!" Rey covered her ears.
"Now that's a name," Maz told her, sliding over a chocolate chip scone.
Rey picked it up, taking a big bite. It was her favorite. "Mommmmm," she grumbled through a mouthful.
"Finish chewing."
Rey groaned before finally swallowing. "What am I going to do if he doesn't show? Bailey really wants to go to this dance."
It was her fault, really. She lost track of the time while setting up a gallery at the children's museum, but 5 minutes wasn't that late. Or was it? But it must have been because 20 minutes and a basket of fries later, still no signs of Maisie's daddy.
"My darling girl," Maz gave Rey's hand a squeeze over the counter, "she's not your Maisie."
The statement hung in the air, nearly silent save for the quiet background chatter of other cafe patrons.
Rey was not going to cry in the middle of her mom's cafe. "That's not– It's not–" why this whole dance situation is stressing me is what she was going to say, but on second thought... of course her mom was probably right.
"The dance will be fine," Maz continued. "Bailey will be fine."
"I'll keep you updated," Rey stood from her stool. "We're going dress shopping this weekend."
With a quick hug, Rey left the cafe with a heavy heart. Not my Maisie. But she had one daughter who was the center of her world. She needed to focus on Bailey.