Page 36 of Freak Show

This kid.

“No, you serial killer.” Titus snorted. “Animals that you like. Admire. Etc.”

“Oh,” she frowned. “I watched a documentary yesterday on cats. Sometimes they eat their young because they’re messed up.” She tilted her head all cute like, despite the words that were coming out of her mouth. “I think I’d go with a cat, then.”

Titus snorted.

“What do you love?” I moved on to the next suggestion.

“I don’t love anything,” Briley said.

“What about your family?” Ari suggested helpfully. “Your dad? You like him, don’t you?”

Briley paused as she considered Ari’s suggestion.

“I’ll go with tacos.” Briley looked down.

Ari covered her face with her hands as she lost her shit beside me.

Briley was my genius child that literally had no idea how to be nice. Other people’s feelings were irrelevant to her.

“I do like my gummy probiotics, though.” Briley nodded. “Okay, I think I got this.”

She turned away from me, and I caught Titus’s gaze as he widened his eyes at me and mouthed, “Serial killer.”

I flipped him off just as Ari finally composed herself.

“That was worth the muscle weakness,” she breathed as she tilted her head back. “Wow.”

I rolled my eyes. “She sure knows how to stroke my ego.”

“She’s a cute kid,” Ari murmured. “You did very well with her.”

I smiled as I watched Briley twirl a piece of her hair on one finger, and her pencil in the other.

“My mom had a big hand in that,” I said. “I might’ve raised her, done all the stuff like getting up with her at night when she was a baby, caring for her when she was sick, stuff like that. But my mom was a powerhouse. She watched Briley for me during the day, then went and worked nights. And supported me financially until I could take that task over when I was first drafted.”

“How did your mom take you becoming a teen dad?” she asked.

I crossed my arms over my chest as I closed my eyes and imagined that conversation.

“The day that I found out, I told my mom almost the moment I walked in the door. The thing you’ll need to know about my mom and me, we’re close. Mostly because we had to be. It was just my mom, my sister and me when I was growing up. My dad had died in Afghanistan when I was twelve, and from then on we had each other’s backs. That day, my mom was pissed as hell. We barely had enough money to keep food on the table for me, yet I was adding another mouth to feed to the mix.”

“My dad could barely afford to keep the circus running when we were younger,” she told me. “So there were nights we were eating leftover funnel cakes and dried turkey legs just to survive.”

“Seven kids is a lot to support,” I admitted. “Your dad sounds like he made it, though. I barely made it with one, let alone half a baker’s dozen.”

Just the thought of having more children right now made me break out in hives.

Not that I didn’t want more kids one day, but I wanted them when I was ready. When my boss wouldn’t shit a brick when they were around.

“Not without sacrifices,” she admitted. “Child labor laws should’ve eviscerated him. But everyone who came out to the circus to watch didn’t see the shitty conditions behind the scenes. They saw what they wanted to see.”

“Where was your mom throughout all of this?” I wondered.

“Like I told you earlier, my mom was a bit of a selfish person. Which, understandably, she had a right to be selfish when it came to my dad.” She paused. “However, when she moved on, she left me with my dad because Dad fights dirty. He threatened a lot of things to ensure that she had no other choice but to leave me. But we maintained a healthy relationship and bonded over our hate of the circus.”

“And what’s your mom doing now?” I asked.

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