5. Tyler
FIVE
TYLER
Not that I mind running to my daughter if she needs me. But I don’t like that the person connected to everything bad in my life once again continued her track record of making things difficult.
“You seem grumpy, Daddy,” Ellie observes.
I draw a deep breath and my eyes find hers in the rearview mirror. “I’m not grumpy at you, shug.”
“Do ya have a lot of work at the shop?” she asks, sing-songing it like it’s not a massive inconvenience she’s talking about, but rather which flavor of ice cream I’ll be having later.
If I let us have ice cream. She gets ice cream once a week, a small treat once a day, and juice during our Saturday morning breakfast out at the diner.
I might be a single dad, but I’m determined to not be the single dad who lets their kid do whatever nutritionally.
Everyone’s always waiting for a single dad to fuck up, and I’m not inclined to give them any more ammo than I need to.
“I got work, but we’ll still have fun today.”
A peek into the backseat shows Ellie barely paying me any mind, just looking out the window. “Why don’t we ever come out here?”
“Well, we live in town. If we don’t have anybody to visit, we don’t have any reason to come out here.”
“Oh!” Ellie’s eyes light up. “Miss Becca opens her pumpkin patch on the weekends too. Anybody can come.”
I nod and sigh, trying to sound enthusiastic. “You don’t say.”
“Yeah! Can we go?”
I respond with the time-honored Southern “no”: “We’ll see.”
Right, into the middle, left, into the middle.
No matter how many times I braid Ellie’s hair, I still have to think through each step.
The days run together: breakfast, school dropoff, work, school pickup, lunch, work, try not to let my preschooler go wild in my shop, dinner, play in the park, bedtime.
And since we got back from her farm, Ellie hasn’t been able to stop talking about Becca.
“I think Miss Becca is a fairy princess,” Ellie sighs.
I chuckle as I tie off the bottom of her braid with a clear elastic. Thank god for Dustin’s girlfriend, who taught me how to do all this girl dad stuff.“Yeah? What makes you say that?”
“She’s pretty and nice and all the animals like her.”
My brow wrinkles and I lift the sheets for her to slide in.
Ellie sleeps on what used to be my bed, before we moved into this matchbox-sized one bedroom.
Now, it’s a queen mattress on the floor so she doesn’t fall out of bed, and she gets the thing all to herself.
Sometimes I’ll come in if she has nightmares, but my spot is on the couch every night.
“Animals usually like whatever person takes care of them.”
“No, but even the birds like her.”
“Birds? Like her chickens?”
“No, Daddy. Tree birds. And squills and stuff.” She says “squirrels” in that cute way she does, like there’s no way in hell she’ll ever be able to say it right.
I hope she never says it right. Makes my heart melt every damn time.
“That’s interesting,” I say, not wanting to shut my daughter down, but also sure as hell not agreeing with her.
“Next time I see her, I hope she has T-Bone with her.”
I search for something nice to say other than snapping, We’re never seeing her again if I can help it.
“I bet she will, shug. But the real question is,” I tuck the covers around her shoulders, then waist, then legs, “are you snug as a bug in a rug?”
Ellie giggles as I kiss her forehead and give her one bonus squeeze through her blankets. “Love you.”
“I love you too, Daddy.”