Nash
FOUR
My daughter had had nightmares as long as I’d known her.
But that night, the condom broke.
I had no idea.
When she showed up a year and a half later with a baby in her arms and desperation in her eyes, I knew that little girl was mine.
A paternity test proved it. Cornelia—a ridiculous name for a kid, which is how she ended up being Nellie, or Nell, depending on who was talking—was too much for Dana. Dana wanted a life.
I didn’t have much of a life to speak of…so Nell became my whole world, and Dana got free.
And now, I’d broken a very important rule of parenthood—don’t fuck your kid’s teacher—and I felt like an asshole.
I stood in the doorway to Nell’s room, arms crossed, not wanting to wake her up.
She’d had a rough night; she didn’t like sleepovers, but we kept trying because she loved her cousins.
I’d shown up at my sister Claire’s place still smelling like Maggie’s perfume, Claire had clocked it immediately, shaken her head like she always did and said something about me being a mess… I’d taken Nell home and put her to bed.
She’d made me sleep in her room for hours.
I’d done it, because I didn’t say no to my little girl.
Me and her mom were both fuck-ups in our own special way. I had no idea how she’d turned out perfect.
I left her to sleep a little longer and got the coffee started in the small kitchen, then I set to work mixing up batter for waffles.
She normally liked letting her nose wake her up; it was easier to stomach not being a morning person when there was a sweet treat waiting.
So I cooked, and I wondered if she needed to take this Friday off, or if maybe I was just hoping she did so I wouldn’t have to show my face at Juniper Hills Elementary…
But Nell woke up maybe ten minutes after I started the pancakes, appearing at her door holding a massive stegosaurus toy she’d named Gerald, wearing pink PJs, her hair a complete mess.
“Daddy?” she said, voice rough with sleep. “Don’t I need to go to school?”
I laughed under my breath. Always the good student…another way she was nothing like me.
“Yeah, bug. You got time—come eat first.”
She padded over and climbed up onto her stool at the wraparound kitchen counter, dragging Gerald onto the seat next to her. He was about as big as she was. She had some serious brute strength to lug him around everywhere.
“Is that waffles?” she said.
“Yup.”
She frowned. “Why am I getting a special breakfast?”
Jesus, she was whipsmart. Even at five, she was already way ahead of me.
“Because you were really brave last night giving sleepovers another go,” I said.
She brightened a little at that, sitting up straighter, making sure Gerald sat straighter too. I dished out a waffle and slid it across the counter to her, then I handed her the syrup—before pointing at Gerald.
“Remember Gerald doesn’t get waffles or syrup,” I said. “Otherwise he has to get washed again.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
I snorted.
At some point this year she’d started doing that—the “yes, sir” thing—and I was beyond confident that it was a joke.
I grabbed my own waffle, pulled up the stool at the end of the bar, then we ate in silence for a minute. Her feet swung, kicking the counter. She ate close to the whole thing, then started pushing the last of her waffle around the plate, sobering.
“Something wrong, bug?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose.
“If something happens at a sleepover,” she started, “does it stay at the sleepover?”
Alarm bells immediately rang in my head. Fuck me…she’d been at Claire’s, for fuck’s sake. What could have happened? Why was she applying Vegas rules to spending time with her cousins?
I somehow maintained composure. “Depends what it is,” I said, very much like a normal person.
She pushed her waffle in a circle.
“Like.” Another circle. “Like if something sad happened. Does it have to stay there or can I tell you?”
Okay. Sad, not scary. I could literally feel my blood pressure come back down.
“You can always tell me anything,” I said. “Always. That’s the rule. And then I’ll keep the secret between us if we need to, okay?’
She peered over at me like she wasn’t sure if I was a trustworthy confidante. I gave absolutely nothing away, certainly not the fact that I was ready to drive over to Claire and Andy’s place right after I dropped Nell off and start some serious shit.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s just. Sadie was talking about her mommy.”
I let out a long breath.
It was a bit of a cluster, the whole relationship…but Sadie was my ex’s kid. My ex, Amy—she’d married a great guy, had a whole bunch of kids, lived the perfect life after moving back home. We’d been close, more like family at this point than former lovers.
Then she’d died last year driving to the twins’ hockey game. Black ice.
Husband, a teenage daughter, middle school twins, and little Sadie left behind.
“I didn’t know Sadie was coming to the sleepover,” I murmured.
“Sadie is my friend and we had fun,” Nell clarified. “But she—she told a scary story about dangerous ice. She said Aunt Amy was so hurt from the ice that they didn’t get to see her…her body.”
I reached over to take Nell’s little hand in mine, squeezing it. She was being strong. The nightmares last night proved she hadn’t felt that strong at all…and she shouldn’t have had to.
“That must have been really hard to hear,” I said.
Nell’s chin wobbled. “It made me cry and then I felt bad because Sadie was crying and then we all cried.”
Yeah, I was going to need to have a conversation with Claire. And Amy’s widower, Reid. And Claire’s husband, Andy.
This was the part I really, really didn’t like.
“It’s always okay to cry when something sad happens,” I said. “No one’s judging you.”
“I don’t care about that,” Nell said, then she looked up at me with watery eyes.
The tears were on their way.
I braced for it—because I always had to brace for it, because seeing my little girl cry was maybe the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.
“You’re not going to have an ice crash, are you?” she asked.
The tears spilled over.
One second she was holding it together and the next they were just there, running down her cheeks, her chin doing that wobble that absolutely destroyed me every single time without fail.
I was off my stool and around the counter before I’d even thought about it, picking her up off her seat, Gerald and all. She wrapped around me like a koala, face buried in my neck, and I stood there in my kitchen at seven in the morning holding my crying five year old and staring at the ceiling.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey, look at me.”
She pulled back just enough. Her face was a mess. I wiped her cheeks with my thumb.
“You listening?”
She nodded, sniffling.
“I drive the same roads every day,” I said. “I know every one of them. And I’m real careful. You know why?”
She shook her head.
“Because I’ve got you to come home to,” I said. “That makes me the most careful driver in Juniper Falls. Nobody’s got more reason to be careful than me.”
She studied my face. Doing her check.
“Promise?” she said.
“Promise.”
She wiped her nose on my shoulder. I let it happen.
“You want to stay home today, bug?” I asked. “It seems like last night was really hard, but you were very brave.”
She shook her head against my shoulder, gripping me tight. “No, I promised Miss Laine I would bring her more dinosaur facts today.”
Of course she had.
Of course the thing that was going to get my daughter out of bed after a rough night and into her shoes and down the street to school was a promise she’d made to Maggie Laine about dinosaur facts.
I set her down, hands on her shoulders.
“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s get you ready.”
She nodded and disappeared down the hall toward her bedroom with Gerald tucked under her arm. I could hear her talking to him, probably briefing him on the day’s agenda.
I stood in the kitchen for a second and looked at the ceiling.
I promised Miss Laine.
Two months. She’d known this woman two months and she was hauling herself out of bed after a nightmare sleepover on the strength of a promise about dinosaur facts.
I couldn’t blame her.
Even if the things I wanted to share with Maggie weren’t even close to dinosaur facts.