“Mom says she’s young?” Luna sounded surprised as she tugged off her nightgown.
“Yes,” Hallie answered, spying the mattresses I had propped against the wall. She began running at them full speed and bouncing off again. “Last week when she told us she and Bryce were getting married, I said I didn’t know brides could be as old as her, and she said brides could be any age as long as they believe in happily ever after.”
At the mention of Naomi’s boyfriend, a wealthy guy we’d gone to high school with I’d never much liked, I snorted. The thought of that asshole succeeding where I’d failed made me want to punch things.
And as for happily ever after, good fucking luck.
“What about you, Daddy?” Hallie asked, flinging herself at the mattress again.
“What about me?”
“Do you believe in happily ever after?”
“No.” I handed Luna her socks. That’s when I noticed she had gum in her hair. Frowning, I examined the remnants of the watermelon Hubba Bubba the girls had begged me for at the store yesterday.
“Why not?”
Annoyed, I turned to face her. “Because most adults outgrow fairy tales once they stop thinking like children. I’m one of them.”
Hallie made a face. “That’s stupid. No one is too old to be happy.”
“Never mind.” I tossed Hallie’s shorts and shirt at her. “Get dressed while I find the scissors. If I can’t get that gum out of Luna’s hair, I have to cut it out.”
Luna gasped and covered her matted blond curls with her hands. “No! Last time, you made it uneven and Mom yelled at me because I’m not supposed to have gum. And you were supposed to know that.”
“Sorry.” I held up my hands. “I’ll do better this time.”
“You promise?” She eyed me warily, reluctant to let go of her head.
“Yes.”
“Make him pinkie swear,” said Hallie as she yanked up her shorts.
I held out my pinkie, and Luna hooked her tiny finger over mine. “I swear to do a better job this time,” I told her. “Now you swear to stop trying to chew gum and eat your hair at the same time.”
She laughed. “I promise.”
Just after eight, I hustled the girls out the door, slightly behind schedule. As anxious as they were to move into the new place, they could dawdle like it was an Olympic sport.
But it had taken me a solid twenty minutes of working on the gum in Luna’s hair before I gave up and cut it out, and then Hallie hadn’t been able to find her lucky penny. After turning the apartment upside down and mopping her tears—“but you gave me that lucky penny on my first day of school last year and I need it for this year too or else I won’t be okay!”—I promised her I’d come back and look for it later, but we had to get going in order to pick up the truck on time. She was still sobbing as I hurried them out to the parking lot, where Luna tripped on a loose chunk of asphalt and skinned her knee.
Now both girls were crying.
I carried Luna back into the apartment as she howled in pain, Hallie following close behind, the lost penny momentarily forgotten in light of the bloody knee.
Setting Luna on the counter, I cleaned her off and dug through the box labeled BATHROOM until I found a bandage.
“Those are plain.” Luna sniffed tearfully at my beige Band-Aid. “Mom has pink ones with Hello Kitty on them.”
I clenched my teeth. “Do you want to go by Mom’s house to get one?”
“Would we still have time for donuts?”
“Probably not.”
The girls exchanged a look. “Then I’ll have the plain,” Luna said. “But kiss it first.”
I kissed the bandage and she giggled. “Not the Band-Aid, Daddy. My strawberry.”
Leaning over, I kissed the red abrasion on her knee, then gently covered it with a boring beige Band-Aid. “I’ll get some better ones at the store, okay?”
“Okay. Ask Mom where she gets the Hello Kitty ones,” she said as I lifted her down.
“I’ll think about it.”
Twenty minutes later, we were heading for my sister’s house, eating glazed donuts and banging our heads along to some hard rock, which the girls called “Dad music.” In the rearview mirror, I looked at my daughters, and as always, I was half-stunned to see them sitting back there—was I really a father?—and fully knocked out by how much I adored them. Sometimes I thought I might be having a heart attack when I looked at them. The feeling was that powerful.
Hallie had my dark hair and brown eyes as well as my stubborn streak and smart-ass mouth. She had Naomi’s lightly freckled nose and relentless need to ask questions. Physically, Luna was her mother through and through, from the blond curls to the dimpled smile, but she was much more easygoing, and she always laughed at my jokes.
I turned down the music. “So how did I do this morning?” This was another game they loved—giving me a score based on how well I’d handled the morning. I’d invented it to distract them from missing their mom in the early days of the split. “Ten, right?”
“I don’t know about ten,” Hallie said. “I think there should be a point off for cutting Luna’s hair.”
“But that was her gum,” I argued.
“Still. And then my lucky penny got lost.”
“You lost the penny!”
“And you didn’t have Hello Kitty Band-Aids,” Luna added, wiping her hands on the front of her shirt.
“That’s three things,” Hallie said. “And ten minus three is seven.”
“Seven out of ten?” I shook my head. “No fucking way. I need at least an eight.”
“You did let us sleep in your bed,” Hallie allowed. “I guess we could give you a point for that.”
“And we’ll give you another one for a ride in the truck!” Luna added.
“Hmmm.” I pretended to consider their offer. “So I’d get a nine out of ten?”
“Yes,” they answered.
“Fine. But I’m playing Dad music the whole time.” I cranked up the volume on Aerosmith and rolled down the windows.
Nine out of ten wasn’t perfect, but I’d fucking take it.
Two
Winnie
I like a well-made man as much as the next girl, but I never truly considered myself a creeper until the day my next-door neighbor moved in.
Around one o’clock that day—a Saturday—I was sitting on my bedroom floor painting my toes when I heard the sound of a truck with noisy brakes in the parking lot. My windows were open, and after the truck’s engine shut off, I heard two male voices.
Intrigued, I stood up and walked on my heels over to the front window. Nudging the curtain aside, I peeked out and saw two muscular guys in jeans and T-shirts rolling up the truck door and pulling out the loading ramp.
I recognized one of them—the tall one with the baseball cap, dark scruffy jaw, and gray T-shirt. Yesterday afternoon, I’d seen him coming out of the condo next to mine just as I was pulling into my driveway after work. The end unit had been empty for a couple months but had recently been sold—maybe he was the new owner? I’d have introduced myself right then, except that he’d seemed in a hurry, only giving me a quick nod before jumping into a dusty black, older-model SUV the next driveway over and taking off.