Page 28 of Spoil
“Thank you again, for everything, Daniel. I’m sorry....” I want to apologize for her, but she’s allowed to feel big feelings.
“I liked seeing you again today, Danny,” he says to a scowling little girl. Her shoulders are pulled up to her ears, and she stares at the gravel walkway.
She grunts.
“Oh, I have this for you, too. Don’t want to forget.” He hands a folded piece of paper into my hand and walks back to his car.
“What is this?” I call after him as I unfold it. At first my brain doesn’t compute, and then I realize it’s a check. For $500,000.
I wave it at him as he rounds the front of his car. “It’s child support and alimony. "
“I can’t take this!”
“No take-back-sies!” he shouts back on a laugh as he plops into his car and starts the ignition and drives away.
I look down at my little angry gremlin and sigh. I let us inside the house and plop onto the couch after I’ve dropped my bag and shoes at the door.
“Your father’s ridiculous,” I grumble as I put the check in my bag. I’ll figure out what to do with that later.
I grab Danny’s hand and drag her into the living room where I sit and gather her in my lap and just hold her. The longer I hold her, the softer her body becomes.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“You know it’s okay if you have big emotions, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about what you’re feeling now?”
“I didn’t like that he was there.”
“Okay. That’s fair. Would you prefer he wait in the hallway next time? He was asking me how I wake you up without startling you, and I was showing him. But you’re right. Waking up to a strange man can be scary. I’m sorry.”
Her tiny body softens more.
“But he’s not a strange man. He’s my dad. I just don’t know how to act around him.”
“You just be you. He wants to get to know Danny. Not how Danny acts.”
Sad little eyes look up at me, and I see myself in her place. Dad never outright called me a burden, but every time I had big emotions or acted like myself he made it very clear that I was a burden. He would sigh, long and pained. And I wish I’d had a mother to hold me and tell me that I wasn’t a burden. And that it was okay not to act perfectly all the time. That I deserved to take up space just because. Not because I’d earned it.
“What if he doesn’t like me?” she whispers.
I give her a squeeze. “Ah, that’s the great thing about having a mommy and daddy. It’s called unconditional love. It means no matter what you do, or how you act, we will always love you.”
“Always?”
I nod. “Always.”
I move her tiny body off of me as she thinks through her thoughts.
“How about we make waffles this morning? That’ll cheer us up.”
“Do you think my dad likes waffles?”
“I don’t know! Let’s ask him.”
