Page 33 of Power Play

I looked over at the little girl who was sucking on the end of her ponytail. She looked about five. She was reading a Junie B. Jones book.

Interesting.

“Well, I have your money,” I said. “I’ll just drop it and leave you-”

His phone rang and Liam grabbed it and stood up. Unapologetically, taking the save.

“I need to take this. Can you…watch her?” he said and walked away from the room towards the kitchen.

Leaving me with the little girl, who, when he left, sighed and rolled over on her side, putting her back to me. I didn’t know what was going on here, but I couldn’t just leave. She was a bored, unhappy kid. It went against my grain to leave her like that.

“Hey,” I said.

She was silent.

“I love that book,” I said.

She looked over her shoulder at me like she didn’t believe me.

“Shut up your face,” I said, quoting the one about the fruit cake.

She smiled, just a little, and turned back to her book and the couch cushions.

“So…where’s your mom?”

“Carson City, Nevada,” she said.

I hummed in my throat like that made sense. “Is…ah…is Liam looking after you?”

She shrugged as if to say,sort of? But also,who can tell?And maybe a little of,if you can call it that.

The laughter burst out of me so hard it hurt my throat. The little girl scowled over her shoulder at me like I wasn’t funny at all.

This was my favorite kind of kid. If I was being honest, the gregarious kids, the precocious ones. The ones who never met a stranger and made all kinds of eye contact when talking to adults – they made me nervous.

Give me a shy kid. A reticent kid. Give me a kid I needed to draw out of their shell and I would put my back into it.

Kids like the girl on the edge of the couch reminded me of me at that age. Following my dad around with a book in my hand. Sitting in corners. Surrounded all the time by adults talking over my head.

I knew how hard that could be.

“Are you having fun?” I asked her.

She shrugged again, same shrug. But this shrug said very clearly -No. No, I am not having fun.

I couldn’t stand seeing all the game pieces laying scattered around. Things would get lost. Put in the wrong box. All these games would be ruined because someone didn’t care enough to put them away right.

I stacked up the checkers and put them in the box. One of the other games was chess. The black pieces were all cats and the white pieces were all different kinds of dogs.

It was cute.

“Did you play chess?” I asked the little girl, holding up the white poodle.

“He forgot the rules,” she said, sounding about as glum as a kid could sound.

I used to play with my father. I hadn’t played since that night in Nashville. After I got the frantic text from my father and left Liam’s hotel room without even saying goodbye.

“Help me, honey. I’m in trouble. It’s an emergency.”

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