Page 13 of CurVy Baby

She is perceptive beyond her years.

Perhaps survival trauma from an alcoholic mother and a life surrounded by strangers and depravity. She has no concerns now. I see to that. She has safety, space, pretty dresses, cartoons, school, attention, love, and dance.

Tyler thinks she is going to be a pop star.

Up on stage, singing about her skater-boy boyfriend. Well,hell no.She can sing about ponies and Jesus. No boyfriends. No boys… Not even as friends.

No girls, either?—

I inhale the tobacco until my lips singe against the heat of the burning cherry. Dropping it in the ashtray, I lean on the back porch and watch her golden hair flap in the wind, her face scrunching when the sprinkler hits it.

Will Dexter fit into our lives?

Or change them?

Fucker.

Jealousy and protectiveness wrap my muscles in knots. It is already a balancing act, parenting as a threesome. Were Dexter and Tyler not my brothers, I would take Molly and Vallie and hide them away. But I can’t live without Tyler, my soul’s severed and deranged half, and I can’t bear Dexter’s isolation, so I will share. But never like this again.

I understand he needed one night with her to connect without me or Tyler. Never again.One night.One. Damn. Night. From now on, my family will stay home where I can get to them. In this house. I’ll never let anyone take her away again. Under these circumstances, I will share the only woman I have ever loved, the only one I’ve ever met capable of loving us all equally.

Me a bit more…

Arrogant, I know.

“Watch me.” Molly suddenly giggles, pulling me from my musings and forcing a small grin to my lips. “Dad. Watch me.”

Dad.

She has changed the very fibres of my soul. I didn’t even want her. Not really. Tyler and Vallie did, and I gave them whatever they wanted.

Our relationship started slower.

She loved Vallie from day one and stared in awe at Tyler’s antics, but one night, when a storm hit, and a tree branch began to scratch at her window like wiry fingers from her past, she became my daughter.

I was outside having a cigarette when I saw her perched on the windowsill, staring at the twiggy fingers on the glass, barely blinking, as if her attention would prevent them from grabbing her.

She sobbed softly. Alone.

She never cried out for Vallie or Tyler or, expected help. It was then that I realised help and security was so foreign to this little girl that she didn’t even realise that was a parent’s role in her life. I remembered the day I called her a stupid little girl—before I knew her. Or cared. I hated that those words came from my mouth.

My entire being flooded with responsibility in that moment.

Needed her to know she was safe.

I’m not sure what came over me… my heart just drowned. I fix things; that is what I do. So, I threw my cigarette to the floor and went to the garden shed to collect my chainsaw.

The rain belted down on me.

Tree branches whipped around.

The atmosphere was set on killing me.

A normal man would have gone inside and held her, told her it was only a tree and dealt with the encroaching limb in the morning when the world wasn’t set to chaos.

But I am not a normal man.

Never have been.

---