Page 7

Jerry left the office, but I stayed behind to have a quick word with my father.

“I don’t trust that guy. I don’t want her staying here another night,” I say.

My father nods. “It’s your choice, son.”

“Can she stay at your place tonight?”

He nods. “She knows us well enough that she’d be comfortable there, and it’ll give her an opportunity to talk with you.”

“Do I tell her tonight?”

“You tell her when you’re ready. She handled today well, but she may be keeping it bottled up. Maybe it runs in the family.” He clears his throat with a pointed glance at me. “If you need my help or your mother’s, say the word.”

The last twelve hours represent the first ounce of support I’ve felt from him in a long time…maybe in my entire life.

I nod. “I appreciate that, and I will take you up on that. What happens next with the will?”

“The will goes to probate, which could take a couple weeks,” my father says. “I’m the executor, and I can tell you now that nobody with a stake is going to contest anything. Jerry’s full of bullshit, so no worries there. The Randalls were both only children, so they have no siblings to argue over their estate, and both Caroline’s and Simon’s parents are deceased. It’s unusual, but there is no next of kin, so it falls to you. You decide the timeline where the little girl is concerned.”

I nod. “Okay. Was there anything in the amendment that could give me some clues as to how to do any of this?” I ask.

“Like a handbook?” my father suggests, and I lift a shoulder as if to say yeah, that’s sort of exactly what I meant. “No. I’m sorry, Travis. Children don’t typically come with handbooks, even in this unfortunate circumstance.”

I’m quiet a beat, and then I say, “I’d like to give her a few days to wrap her head around all this. Maybe go to Caroline and Simon’s house and let her take whatever she wants, get to know each other, figure out what she needs at my place.”

“I think that’s a good idea. You’ll need to get her registered for school, too.”

I nod. I hadn’t even thought about that.

I wonder what else I haven’t thought about yet. I don’t even know what I don’t know. I don’t know what questions to ask.

But I have a friend with a kid. Maybe he’ll know.

“Can you tell Jerry that the girl will be coming with us tonight?” I ask.

He nods. “I’ll tell Harper, too.”

“Thanks.”

The crowd is starting to thin by the time we exit Jerry’s office, and I spy Harper sitting at the kitchen table. Her hand is folded under her chin as she stares out the window lost in thought. Her friend is beside her, and they both have coloring books in front of them, though only one of them is actually coloring.

I walk over and glance down at the coloring book and I spy an intricately decorated unicorn.

“You like unicorns?” I ask.

Harper glances over at me and moves her fist from under her chin as if I broke up her trance. She nods. “Unicorns are my second favorite, tied with dinosaurs. But my top favorite would be dinocorns.”

“Dinocorns?” I repeat.

She pulls a sheet of paper out of the back of her coloring book, and it’s a hand-drawn dinocorn, exactly as described, colored in pink and purple hues.

“Did you draw this?” I ask.

She nods.

“It’s incredible.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

I take out my phone and snap a picture of it as an idea formulates in my head.

As I recall, Caroline was quite artistic. Simon was a snooze fest who did something with finances, but Caroline was always doing projects, mostly with furniture. She’d refinish projects in her garage and sell them for a pretty penny, and it looks like her daughter was gifted her talents.

I wonder what Harper has that’s mine aside from my eyes and my nose.

Is she a fast runner? Does she prefer to dive in and do things rather than sit and learn about them? Is she quietly introspective? Does she have a small circle of people she trusts even though she has a large network of acquaintances?

I guess these are all things I’ll get to know.

I slide into the chair beside her. “Can you give us a minute?” I say to her friend.

The friend gives me an odd look, but then she stands and prances away.

Harper gives me a bit of side eye.

“What?” I ask innocently.

She narrows her eyes. “What what?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Why’d you send my friend away?” she shoots back.

“I just wanted to give you a chance to talk about anything you need to talk about without feeling like your friend was listening,” I say.

“Oh.”

I felt like that opened the door, but she doesn’t say anything else, and now I’m sitting here awkwardly trying to figure out what to say myself. I’m a stranger to her, so I’m not sure why she’d feel comfortable confiding in me. “So, uh…my father said he’s been going over your parents’ will.”

“What’s that mean?”

“A will is a document where people can say who gets what of theirs in case anything ever happens to them, and they wanted you to have everything.”

“Does it say who they wanted me to live with?” she asks, and I sort of love the fact that she cuts through the bullshit to ask. “Because Leona’s great and all, but I don’t want to live here.”

“You don’t?” I ask, surprised.

She shakes her head, and she glances around before she leans in and lowers her voice. Tears glisten in her eyes, and my heart breaks. “I’ve never liked sleeping over here and now I’m stuck living here and I miss my mom and dad.” She sniffs and brushes away a tear, and I lean over and wrap my arms around her.

A weird feeling permeates my chest.

It’s some combination of protective and defensive and vulnerable. I love her without knowing her, and I’m terrified at the same time. I’ve never felt anything like this before in my life, but it’s real fucking powerful.

“Why don’t you like sleeping over here?” I ask.

She sniffles again, and I pull back.

“Leona’s oldest brother has these posters of creepy clowns all over his room. It’s the room right next to Leona’s, and I feel like they’re looking at me through the wall.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Do you want to stay at my parents’ place tonight?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I really just want to go home.”

I nod. “Of course. Then that’s what you’ll do.”

“Really?” she asks, and an air of hope lights up around her.

“I’ll stay there with you, okay?”

She twists her lips and looks up at me again with this look that just tears at my very soul. “Why are you being so nice?”

Because that’s what dads are supposed to do…they’re supposed to make it all better when their babies are hurting.

It’s a deep, low voice in the far recesses of my mind, and I pray I hear it speak again because it seems to be awfully full of the type of wisdom I’m going to be searching for over the next few days, or weeks, or months…or years.

“Because you’re going through something, and I just want to make it a little easier on you.”

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I know I just met you today, but I feel like I’ve known you a long time.” She tears out a sheet from her unicorn coloring book, pushes it over to me, and hands me some crayons.

We color together quietly until the last guest walks out the door, and then I take her home.