Page 78 of Touch the Sky

She’s not my kid. I have no idea how Tess would want me to handle this. I could end up crossing a line. That’s the last thing I want after we barely made it through all the line-crossing we did last weekend.

I can’t donothing, though. I can’t look at this girl, sitting here crying over her dad’s mistakes in the same hayloft where I’d come cry over my ownmauditfather when I was her age, and give her a bunch of half-baked bullshit instead of something that might actually help.

When I was her age, I just wanted the truth.

“Here is the thing,” I begin. “Grown-ups are dumb. We act like we are so much smarter than kids, but we’re not. In a lot of ways, we get dumber as we get older. We make everything complicated. We do not say what we mean, and we do not act how we feel.”

She scrunches her eyebrows up like I’m speaking in riddles.

“What I am trying to say is that I know your dad loves you,” I explain, “and I know he likes you too. You are a great kid, and anyone would be lucky to be your parent. He knows that. Of course he does, but maybe right now, he’s not acting like it.”

I dig my fingers into the hay bale to keep from making fists again. There’s nomaybehere. It sounds like Baron is being an absolute shithead, but it’s not my place to bash her dad in front of her.

Besides, this isn’t about him. It’s about Shel and what she’s going through.

“That hurts. My dad…he forgot a lot too,” I say. “A lot of people would just tell you that your dad is trying his best and that people make mistakes, but I am not going to say that. It just makes everything more confusing.”

Hearing that kind of reassurance never made a difference to me. It felt like all the adults were keeping a secret, because how could my dad love me as much as everyone said if he didn’t treat me the way they told me he was supposed to?

“I do not have it all figured out,” I admit. “Even now. What I know is that it hurts when people who love you let you down again and again. It hurts when they are not the person you need them to be. It hurts when they do not change, and the really hard part is that there are no magic words to make it better. I wish I could tell you something that would make it not hurt anymore, but what I say doesn’t fix it, right?”

She shakes her head and then nestles her chin into the coat’s collar again.

“Yeah,” she says in a quiet voice. “Everybody says he’s trying to do better, but he never does.”

There are a few choice names for Baron tap dancing on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow them down.

“I don’t know your dad, of course,” I say instead. “Maybe he will. I hope he does. I just don’t want to give you more words that won’t help.”

“So what helps?” she asks, her eyes flitting over my face like I’m hiding the answer there. “Does anything help?”

“Your people help.”

I have no idea where the hell that came from. I’m not even sure what I mean, but Shel is blinking up at me like every word is a lifeline I’m throwing her, so I have no choice but to figure it out.

“Your family and your friends,” I explain. “The people whoarethere, you know?”

I feel like I’ve tapped into some hidden spring inside me, like an underground river breaking the surface. The words gush out like a geyser that’s been waiting to burst for years.

“You have so many people who love you, Shel. You have so many people who are going to show up for you. I know it feels like…like there’s this gap, you know?”

I tap my chest, right over my heart.

“Like every time your dad lets you down, there’s this hole that gets bigger, but you don’t have to let it. You have so many people who can fill that up for you, and maybe it won’t always be a perfect fit, but you don’t have to go around living like you’re empty.”

She places her hand on her chest, mirroring my pose, her fingertips pressing into her sternum.

“That really helps?”

I nod. “It really does.”

She shimmies closer, and without a word, she rests her head on my shoulder.

In that moment, I forget all about gaps and holes and broken promises.

In that moment, I feel like pure gold is pouring into my heart, warm and bright and unbreakable.

It’s heavy, but it’s precious. It feels like a gift I’ve committed to treasuring for the rest of my life.