Page 427 of Lodestar

Over the next couple hours, I worked in there with them both, wondering when my edgy interior design had been replaced with fluffy pink throws and myriad picture frames of a little girl I’d never known I’d be fathering in various stages of maturity—Kat beaming at me with a gap-toothed smile in one, her mid-flight as she practiced a somersault, her scowling at a teacher at an end-of-year recital…

I could say, hand on heart, I never thought I’d have kids. Too many trust issues. Too many issues, period. But watching the slow thaw as Kat returned to her usual bubbly self, the rightness of it all hit me.

Not that she was suffering, not that a simple question could trigger dissociation, but the parts of her adults had broken, maybe they were something I was uniquely placed to fix?

Hadn’t adults broken me?

Who else could understand her better?

“What happened, sweetheart?” Star asked her an hour later when Kat decided to do an impromptu midair somersault during some movie about a frog.

Gymnastics were clearly a coping mechanism, but they were also something Star was using as Kat’s baseline—the more chaos she was wreaking midair, the more Star thought Kat was back to her usual self.

Kat’s beaming grin dampened some. “What happened when, Star?”

“You went away.” She shot her a gentle smile which was bound to freak Kat out because Star wasn’t gentle often. If ever. That wasn’t her parenting style. “Here.” She motioned to her eyes.

“I did?” Kat swallowed.

“You did,” I agreed, gently popping into the conversation.

“I-I don’t know why.”

“Do you not like boats?” Star questioned.

Her head whipped to the side. “I don’t.”

“Do you know why? We’ve never been on a boat together so it must have happened… before.”

Kat blinked a couple times. “I just don’t like boats.”

“But you love swimming,” Star pointed out.

“Swimming is different. Swimming is in a pool.” She shuddered. “The ocean…”

“Technically, the Hudson is a river. If that helps any,” I remarked.

Star snorted. “He’s right.”

Kat giggled. “It’s not the same as a pool, Conor!”

“Don’t you want to see the Statue of Liberty, Kat?” I questioned carefully.

“I’ve seen her.”

“From a distance. On a boat, you can get up close and personal. Always so much to do on the water,” I peppered.

She shivered. “I don’t want to get wet.”

“That’s what a boat is for,” Star murmured. “So you won’t get wet. Do you feel like trying? It’s still light enough.”

Kat licked her lips. “You promise that I won’t get wet?”

“Nope.”

“We could take the Staten Island Ferry. The terminal’s two blocks away,” I said easily.

“It’s also free. Conor’s such a cheapskate, Kat,” Star teased.

---