“Well, what do you think of today, Annelise? What do you think of Jasper?”
They’d gotten Annelise into her pajamas, and Eden was perched on her bed.
“He’s really cool.” Her face was still alight with a sort of wondering abstraction, but her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes had a sort of hectic brightness she got when she was exhausted but still hopped up on emotion in a night-after-the-day-at-an-amusement-park kind of way.
And that wondering abstracted expression reminded Eden of the time Annelise had wanted a Sunshine Sandy doll for Christmas and had gotten a Patty Peaches doll instead because Sunshine Sandy was sold out.
And as it turned out, Annelise ended up loving Patty Peaches.
But not right away.
“I’m going to keep this forever!” She held out the tortoiseshell guitar pick that said, “Jasper Townes” on it. They were probably chucked by handfuls into audiences at his shows. At least it wasn’t a koala. “I’m going to take it with me everywhere!”
“It’s lovely,” Eden agreed. “So are you glad to know who your dad is?”
Leesy nodded. “It’s like...” She sighed theatrically. “The suspense waskillingme. But I thought he would feel more like...”
She glanced up guiltily.
“More like...” Eden prompted gently.
“More like... mine.” And she folded her hands over her heart. “You know, like, the way you’re mine, and Grandma and Grandpa are mine. Like I thought I’d feel him right here right away. Because he’s my dad.”
Eden was speechless.
And it was darling and hilarious and gratifying and deeply painful and beautiful that her daughter was probably, right now, trying to be delicate with her mom’s feelings.
“Well, right now you’re getting to know each other. Maybe someday he’ll feel like yours. Howdoeshe feel to you right now?”
“Mmm... well, he’s funny and nice. He doesn’t really feel like a dad, though, if that’s okay. He’s maybe too thin? Dads are usually a little thicker and wider, seems like. And he smells like Greta’s store, kind of. Is it okay if I don’t think he feels like adaddad?”
That smell would be the patchouli he dabbed on. Greta at the New Age Store sold every imaginable oil and incense.
“Sure. I think being a father and being a dad are a little bit different. Being a father is a result of biology—you know what that means, right? It takes a lady and a man to make a baby.” Annelise scrunched her nose here and waved her arms as if her mom had just farted by way of discouraging her from expounding on that. “And being a dad is something you kind of become as a result of being there every day and being involved in everything you do, and taking care of you the way a mom does.”
“Like carrying you on shoulders at picnics and fixing stuff and coaching your soccer team and stuff like that?”
“Yeah, stuff like that. And making sure you’re safe and happy and eat your vegetables and clean your room and learn how to build stuff and teaching you to drive when the time comes...”
She stopped when guilt swooped in:she’dhad a great dad, who was part of nearly everything she was and said and did, the same as her mom was. She’d known the luxury of waking up with Glenn’s comforting, gruff, hilarious presence in the house every day.
And here she was expounding on the idea of a great father to a kid who had... Jasper Townes. More an exotic pet than a dad.
She was desperate to ask Annelise:Do you feel safe here with me? Do you feel loved enough? Are you conscious of missing something in your life, like Jasper said he was? Was it like a house with a drafty window or a gap where your baby tooth fell out, and now everything is whole again, now that the mystery is solved?
Questions she of course couldn’t ask a ten-year-old.
She was going to have to keep doing the best she could and take it with a heaping dose of faith, the way she’d taken everything so far.
“So... like Grandpa is adad?”
“Right. Your grandpa is a great, great dad for me and a great granddad to you.”
“And some people are naturally kind of dads even if they don’t have kids, like Principal Caldera?”
Damn.
Thatwas as painful and shocking as stepping on a Lego in bare feet in the dead of night.