Page 28 of Suck This

I closed my eyes.

“My wife died, too.” I cleared my throat. “In the same fire.”

My wife had been the person to set the fire, but that was semantics.

“That’s awful.” She moved closer to the grave. “What did you mean by you saying ‘she does that’?”

I walked closer and studied the tidy grave.

I kept it mowed down and clear. The same couldn’t be said for my wife’s grave. Compared to Nola’s, my wife’s looked abandoned and forgotten. But that was by design. She didn’t deserve a spot next to my little one, but the townspeople would’ve thought I was heartless had I not buried her. They’d been watching as I did it, after all.

“Nola hasn’t passed into the afterlife, yet,” I admitted, staring at the apparition next to the grave that housed my daughter’s bones.

The intake of breath I’d expected to hear earlier finally came, and I turned to study Acadia.

“You’re saying you can see her?” she breathed.

I nodded.

“I can,” I confirmed.

She was in the same nightdress that I’d dressed her in sixty-four years ago right before I’d left the house never to see her again.

I remembered that night like it was just yesterday.

Tell her what happened,Nola ordered me in that haughty attitude she always used to shower me with. I could still hear her telling me ‘no.’

• • •

“Daddy, can I go?”

“No, Nola baby. I have to go to work.”

Work being a relative term. I had to go protect my territory from the intruders and to do that, I had to leave her here where it was safe.

“But I want to go.” She pouted, rolling her bottom lip over so I could get the full effect of her pout.

I tried not to smile.

“How about I take you tomorrow night?” I tried to reason.

Though, I should’ve known better. There was no reasoning with a three-year-old.

“No. Tonight,” she ordered, crossing her tiny arms over her chest and glaring at me.

I lost the battle with my laughter and gathered my girl into my arms.

“I have to go stop some bad guys,” I told her.

Nola thought I was a superhero. All she saw were the fast movements and my strength. She didn’t see the other side of me. The side that my wife hated with a passion.

“Okkkkay,” she drawled out. “But you have to get me ready for bed and read me a story. Mommy doesn’t do it right.”

Smiling as a glimmer of satisfaction rolled through me, I picked her up, walked her to the chest of drawers where her nightdresses were, and helped her pick out just the right one.

Pink, of course.

She was a girly girl, through and through.