Madison settles in at the table and starts drawing a taco.
“Table,” I tell her. “That’s another one.”
“Table,” she repeats.
“And tiger and teardrop and—”
“And I’m pretty sure I told a certain little girl that she could manage her homework by herself tonight and didn’t need anyone giving her the answers.”
My attention shifts to Kennedy when she walks into the kitchen, cutting me off mid-answer, giving Madison a pointed look. Right away, by looking at her, I know something’s off. Something has her in a bad mood.
Madison scowls and keeps drawing.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine,” she mutters. “Look, I know you were hoping to spend time with her tonight, but things have been crazy today, work’s a mess—people are out sick and there’s inventory to do, so I have to go back in for a few hours, which means she’s going to have to go to my dad’s.”
My stomach drops.
“He can come,” Madison says.
“I don’t think so,” Kennedy says. “Your grandpa doesn’t like visitors.”
“But he likes us,” she says.
“We’re family,” Kennedy tells her.
“And he’s my daddy,” Madison says, “so that’s our family, too, right?”
Kennedy hesitates. “Right.”
She’s stuck between a rock and a hard place here.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I get it.”
“I’m sorry, really,” Kennedy says, pulling out her phone and dialing a number, sighing dramatically as she mutters to herself, “Answer the freaking phone, Dad…”
He doesn’t answer.
She tries again.
He doesn’t answer that time, either.
Groaning, she hangs up before dialing for the third time.
“I could watch her,” I suggest when she hangs up yet again, getting no answer.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” I say. “Besides, she’s my daughter. I’m equally responsible for her.”
“Never made a difference before,” she mutters as her phone starts ringing. Ouch. Sighing, she glances at it, answering, “Hey, Dad.”
She walks off to talk to him, while I sit down at the kitchen table across from Madison, resigned. She’s busy drawing a table, her taco finished, the word written above it misspelled.
“It’s a C, not a K,” I say, pointing. “T-a-c-o, not t-a-k-o.”
“Thank you,” she says, erasing the whole damn word just to rewrite it properly.
“Anytime, kiddo.”
Kennedy walks back in a minute later, shoving her phone in the back pocket of her work khakis. She doesn’t even look at me as she starts rambling something about homework and dinner and bedtime, reciting rules that Madison soundlessly mimics the same time her mother says them. Clearly, she’s heard this all before…
“Wait, you mean I’m watching her?” I ask, surprised.
Kennedy turns my way. “You wanted to, didn’t you? If not, I can call my dad back.”
“No, no, I did… I do. I’m just surprised.”
“You shouldn’t be. Like you said—she’s your daughter.”
She kisses the top of Madison’s head and says something about being back as soon as she can, and then she’s gone, out the door, heading to work, leaving me sitting here, having not absorbed any of her instructions.
Yeah, I’m going to fuck this up.
Madison finishes drawing her table and adds a tiger and a teardrop into the mix before declaring herself done with homework. She shoves the paper in her backpack before pulling out a beat up notebook and a pencil pouch jammed full of markers. She spreads them out along the table and opens the notebook, flipping through page after page of scribbles.
“What do you have there?” I ask, leaning over, trying to look at the pages, when she inhales sharply and throws herself on top of it, blocking me from seeing anything.
“No, don’t look!” she says, shoving my face away. “It’s not ready!”
“Okay, okay,” I say with a laugh. “I won’t look.”
“Better not, ‘cuz it’s not ready yet for you to look.”
“I won’t look until you tell me I can.”
Only after I say that does she settle back into her chair, satisfied her work is safe. There’s so much of Kennedy in that girl that it’s almost like déjà vu watching her.
Shaking my head, I stand up and look around the kitchen. “Any idea what we’re supposed to do about dinner? I know your mother said something about it.”
“She said no junk food, gotta have real food.”
I glance in the cabinets. “Define real food.”
“Pizza,” she says.
“Ah, pizza I can do,” I say, seeing a flyer on the refrigerator door for delivery.
“And chickens and the breads, too!” Madison declares, continuing to draw in her notebook.
“You got it.”
I call the number, ordering a large pepperoni with chicken wings and breadsticks, even adding a ham and pineapple pizza to the order for Kennedy, in case she’s hungry when she gets home—ordering way too much food for just us.
There’s a knock on the door after about forty-five minutes and I start toward it, pulling out some cash from my wallet, but stop short. I didn’t even think about the fact that somebody might recognize me and question why I’m here. Glancing back at Madison, I consider having her pay them, but well, that goes against everything her mother’s been trying to teach her about not opening the door for strangers.
They knock again, and I take a deep breath before opening the door. It’s a guy, mid-twenties, no older than me. He looks stoned out of his gourd, eyes blazing red, the dank woodsy odor clinging to his uniform, like the guy was smoking on his way to the door. He rambles off the price and I shove some cash at him, taking the pizza. Before I can close the door, though, his bloodshot eyes narrow, face contorting with confusion as he eyes me. “Hey, aren’t you that guy? You know… that one from that movie? The, uh…?” He snaps his fingers, like he’s trying to remember, before he points at me. “Breezeo!”
“Nah, not me,” I say. “Get that all the time, though.”
I shut the door before he can press it any further and watch out the peephole as he lingers. He shrugs it off, though, and strolls away, lighting something before he even reaches his car again.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I turn for the kitchen and nearly slam right into Madison standing there, just inches behind me.
“You told a lie,” she says.
“I did,” I admit, “but it was for the greater-good.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means sometimes it’s better we don’t tell people who I am.”
“Why?”
“Because people are nosey,” I say. “If I admitted who I was, that guy would go back and tell his friends, who would tell their friends, and next thing you know, the whole world would be in my business and want to know what I’m doing here.”
She’s quiet, following me as I carry the pizza to the kitchen. She closes her notebook and sits there as I put some food on a plate for her, sitting down across from her with a plate of my own.
There’s something wrong.
Something’s bothering her. I can tell.
Just like her mother, remember?
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
She shakes her head, saying, “Nothing.”
“Ah, see, now I think you just told a lie.”
“It’s for the greatest-goods.”
I laugh as she tries to throw my words back at me. “Come on, tell me what’s bothering you.”
She lets out the longest, most dramatic sigh, like I’m nagging her half to death here, before she says, “Do you not wanna be my daddy?”
That question is a punch to the chest.
“Of course I do. Why would you think that?”
“ ‘Cuz you don’t want the people to know it,” she says. “And ‘cuz you weren’t my daddy ‘till now.”