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“Yes, of course. We’re going to do something special.”
“You knew? Why didn’t you remind me?” she cried out, re-crossing her arms for dramatic effect. “It’s in two weeks. That’s not far away at all.”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed, watching her through my peripheral vision, trying to understand how Thanksgiving was linked to her bad mood.
I let her sit in silence, something I had learned from Jeremy in therapy. It took a while to get used to not hammering her with questions and forcing her to fess up, but once I stopped, our bond got even stronger. She’d learned to open up, to express herself, and to stop relying on someone begging her to talk.
It was something I needed to learn – to open up. It was so hard for me. Corinne got it from me, and I felt bad every time I saw the learned behavior in her.
Finally, she huffed and said, “That means I won’t see Benny.”
“Who’s Benny?”
“My crush!” she exclaimed, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, though she’d never told me about any crush. “I won’t get to see him for an entire week! What if he doesn’t like me anymore when we go back to school? I’m going to miss him so much!”
I cringed internally. The reminders that my daughter was growing up came more and more frequently these days, and each one was a painful blow.
I tried not to let her see it on my face as the anxiety started to rise in my chest, a tightening that took away my ability to breathe.
I tightened my grip around the steering wheel, feeling the blood leave my fingers, and looked straight ahead. “You have a crush on a boy? Named Benny? Is he nice?”
“Duh! And he’s funny, and he’s cute, too.”
I didn’t know how to navigate these conversations, conversations about boys, with my daughter.
I missed my wife, and I wished she were here to do this. I knew she would have been able to say the right thing, anything, but I felt powerless and full of anxiety.
I was afraid of what it would be like as Corinne got older, and I was afraid to let her be in the world as a girl who would eventually be a woman.
What had happened to her mother had been so wrong and so unfair. She’d been murdered outside a bar, on her way home, by a patron, someone she also thought was funny and cute and nice. She hadn’t known him well, but she had known him. She’d looked into his face and served him and smiled at him, and he’d looked in her face and thought about what she’d look like underneath him.
He’d wondered what she’d look like with no life left in her, and he’d made it happen.
I glanced over at my daughter, and so much came crashing into my awareness. The night I’d found out, I’d been on active duty, and my master chief petty officer had called to talk to me and broke the news.
They’d discharged me soon after under special circumstances, and I’d gone home a single dad with traumas up to my ears.
The victims’ advocates had gotten me into therapy, and Quinn’s life insurance had been enough to take care of us, but it hadn’t been enough to fix me.
I wiped the sweat away from my forehead. It pricked my brow, and I felt a heat rising through my body. I was breathless, hot, and dizzy.
“Daddy? Are you okay?” Corinne asked, her voice higher pitched, her woes forgotten.
I nodded, or at least I tried to nod, swallowing hard. My swallows felt impossible, like a lump I couldn’t pass, and I moved to the left and the right, trying to elongate my torso to get more air into that space.
The world felt like it was crashing around me. I glanced at Corinne and saw her mother’s face, gray and unnatural, an open gash on her lip.
I closed my eyes against the image and pulled over to hyperventilate.
Corinne’s voice was far away as she attempted to comfort me, and I could only see her mother, then the face of someone from my platoon, his eyes blackened, lifeless, cloudy, flies around it.
I wanted to scream, and I held it back for Corinne, even as the sound crawled up my throat for release.
I squeezed my eyes tight and told myself, “You’re safe. This isn’t real. You’re safe. This isn’t real.”
Corinne’s voice was loud but far away as she shouted, “Daddy, are you okay? Daddy, should I call 911? Are you dying Daddy?” She sounded so panicked. When I opened my eyes, I could see that she had climbed into the front seat, tears streaming down her face.
I pulled her into me and held her close, rubbing her back and wishing someone was rubbing mine.