24. Dallas
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dallas
Some kids throw tantrums when they’re upset.
Mine goes… quiet.
Not the good kind of quiet, either. Not the “busy coloring a masterpiece” or “building a horse ranch out of blocks” quiet. No, this is the heavy kind. The kind that settles on her as a too-big coat.
It starts at breakfast.
Lila just sits there, chin in her hand, poking a fork at her scrambled eggs. Normally, she’s narrating her meal as a cooking show host or asking me if chickens are proud of themselves for making eggs.
Today? Nothing.
“You okay, Beanpole?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
She shrugs. Doesn’t look up. Takes one mechanical bite, chews as if it’s a chore, and lets her gaze slide off somewhere toward the window.
That’s clue number one.
Clue number two arrives that afternoon, after school, when she drifts into the living room and drops her backpack in the middle of the floor. Not normal, she’s weirdly particular about putting it on the hook, and collapses on the couch. No TV request. No cookies, no “Daddy, look what I drew.”
She just curls up under the old patchwork quilt Mom made, the one that’s seen more winters than I want to count, and stares at nothing.
I stand in the doorway with a dish towel over my shoulder, watching her. The ranch is quiet in that just after chores way. Stock fed, trucks parked, brothers scattered.
“Hey, Beanpole,” I say, crossing to the couch. “You feeling okay?”
She lifts one shoulder, barely. “I’m fine.”
That word again. The worst word a five-year-old can use.
I sit at the end of the couch and nudge her foot with my knee. “You know that’s what grownups say when they’re absolutely not fine, right?”
A ghost of a smile tries to show up, then gives up halfway.
She tucks the quilt tighter under her chin. “I’m just tired.”
I don’t push. Not yet. With Lila, you can’t pry feelings out. You’ve got to wait until they loosen on their own.
So I stay. I stretch out along the edge of the couch, close enough that my leg touches her hip, and flip absently through the mail on the coffee table. Some feed catalog, two bills, a postcard from one of Mom’s cousins who moved to Arizona and won’t shut up about her citrus trees.
Five minutes tick by. Ten. She doesn’t move.
“Want me to put something on?” I ask. “Cartoons? That show with the singing vegetables you claim to hate but always watch anyway?”
Her lips twitch. “No.”
That’s clue number three and the clincher. Kid turning down TV? We’ve crossed into serious territory.
“Alright,” I say, setting the mail down. “You wanna tell me what’s actually going on?”
She keeps her gaze locked on some point by the window. The late afternoon light slants across her face. Her lashes look even longer in it, making her seem both too big and too small at the same time.
Silence stretches.
Then, so quietly I almost miss it:
“Do people… forget about you?”
“Sometimes,” I say carefully. “People get busy, or scared, or they don’t know how to show up right. But if you’re asking if somebody can just stop caring about you and erase you from their brain like a chalkboard…” I shake my head. “No, sweetheart. Not if they ever really cared in the first place.”
She swallows. “What if they said they’d come back and they didn’t?”
There it is. The shape of the ache.
“Who’re we talking about?”
Her fingers tighten in the quilt. The tip of her nose goes pink.
“Miss Faith.”
The room tilts.
Because this isn’t about me and Faith anymore. This is about what I let my daughter see. What I let her hope for. What I might have handed her without realizing it.
“She said she’d come visit,” Lila continues. “But she didn’t come back. Not even once.” Her little jaw tightens. “Maybe she doesn’t like me anymore.”
The idea of anyone not liking my kid is laughable and infuriating in equal measure.
“Hey now,” I say, shifting so I’m angled toward her. “Look at me.”
She does, reluctantly.
“Faith likes you,” I say. “A lot.”
“How do you know?” she asks, and it’s not defiant, just tired. She’s run out of believing for the day.
“I saw her with you,” I say simply. “Saw the way she listened when you talked about your school project. The way she let you put glitter stickers on her sleeves and didn’t even flinch. The way she smiled when you drew that picture of the ranch with her in it.”
“She laughed a lot,” Lila says, barely audible.
“She did,” I agree. “Because she liked being here. With us. With you.”
A tear finally escapes and slips down her cheek. She swipes at it angrily. “Then why didn’t she come back?”
Because I didn’t make it easy.
Because after everything we did, I pulled back instead of talking. Because I let fear decide that silence was safer than honesty when it came to the heat and tension between us. And now my kid is paying for it.
I could say a lot of things here. About complicated pasts and messy feelings and how adults specialize in sabotaging their own happiness.
Instead, I go with the truth a five-year-old can hold.
“Because she probably didn’t know she could come back so soon,” I say. “Sometimes grownups worry that kids are too busy to hang out.”
“That’s silly,” Lila mutters.
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
We sit in quiet for another moment. Her breathing starts to even out, the trembling fading from her shoulders.
“I miss her,” she says finally. “I liked it when she was here. The house felt fun.”
My sternum twists.
“Do you want to see her again?”
She nods, quick and fierce. “Yes. But what if she says no?”
“Then that’s on her,” I say gently. “Not you.”
She thinks about that, face scrunching as if she’s solving a math problem.
“Can you… ask her?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I can ask her.”
Her shoulders drop a little, some tension draining out.
“Okay,” she says. “But don’t say I’m sad. Just say I… would like to see her. Please.”
“You trying to protect her feelings now?” I ask, a little amused, a lot heartsore.
She shrugs, staring at the quilt pattern. “Maybe.”
I press a kiss to the top of her head. “You got a good heart, kid.”
She doesn’t answer, but she leans into my side, and that’s enough.
Typing to Faith is handling a live wire. Ridiculous for a grown man, but there it is.
I start and delete three different messages.
You forgot your promise to Lila.
Too sharp.
She misses you. I do too.
Too much.
Finally, I settle on:
Dallas: Hey. Got a favor to ask.
She replies quicker than I expect.
Faith: Hey, what’s up?
I run a thumb over the screen, stare at the blinking cursor a little too long, then type:
Dallas: Lila’s had a rough day. She misses you. Thinks maybe you forgot about her.
I watch the “typing” dots appear. Disappear. Reappear.
Faith: Oh. Dallas, I didn’t… I haven’t forgotten her. Not for a second. I just didn’t know if you all wanted me around. Didn’t want to intrude.
That last word does something to me. “Intrude.” As if she was ever anything but welcome here.
I roll my shoulders back, exhale, and answer before I can overthink it.
Dallas: You wouldn’t be, I promise. Would you come for dinner?
There’s a longer pause this time.
The dots pop up again.
Faith: Yeah. I’d like that. If you’re sure.
Am I sure?
No.
Yes.
Both at once.
I flex my hand, then send:
Dallas: I’m sure. Six o’clock? Lila will want to “decorate,” so brace yourself.
Faith: I can handle decorations. Tell her I can’t wait to see her.
Dallas: I’ll tell her. Drive safe.
My thumb hovers.
Then, before I can stop myself, I add:
Dallas: I’m glad you’re coming, too.
The instant it sends, my pulse kicks. There’s no unsend out here in real life.
After a moment:
Faith: Me too.
I lock the phone before I can reread that a hundred times.
Once there’s a plan, Lila rallies as a soldier given a mission.
As soon as I tell her, she becomes a whirlwind in socked feet, sliding through the kitchen, arms full of construction paper and markers.
“We need signs,” she announces. “And candles. And the nice plates.”
“The nice plates are just plates that don’t have chips,” I say, opening cupboards.
“Exactly,” she says, dead serious. “Those ones.”
We spend an hour at the table making “decorations,” which mostly translates to Lila drawing wobbly hearts and horses and practicing writing FAITH over and over until it turns into words that look like F A I F H.
She folds napkins and gently rearranges the salt and pepper shakers “so they feel pretty.”
I handle the roast, the potatoes, and the cornbread. She handles quality control, which mostly means licking the spoon and declaring things “good enough.”
“Do you think she’ll like it?” she asks for the third time, standing back to inspect the table.
“I think she’ll love it,” I say, and I do. The table is a kid’s idea of fancy, crooked placemats, three forks on one setting, a lopsided candle in the middle, but it also looks… homely. Mom and the others made themselves scarce, like they knew this was meant to be small.
Lila nods, satisfied, then chews her lip. “Do I look okay?”
She’s wearing her favorite purple dress over striped leggings, hair half-tamed into two puffy braids that are a little off track.
“You look perfect,” I tell her. “She’s gonna think you’re the best thing she’s ever seen.”
The way her shoulders relax at that… sometimes I forget how much weight my words carry for her. Then I remember, and it terrifies me.