“You hungry?” Brighton asks him.
“Fucking starving,” he swears, and I scowl. “I’m practically eighteen, Ree,” he waves me off and climbs into the back seat of the truck. Brighton walks me over to the passenger side and palms the handle.
“That was impressive,” I say, and Brighton smirks at me.
“I own a sports bar, Hellcat. It’s my job.”
“Right. Well, still, he’s not the easiest. He definitely bites.” I joke.
“So do you," he teases, popping the door for me.
“You’re a sadist.” I roll my eyes. When I climb in, I turn to Reid in the back seat, and he just shrugs in approval, which is more than I was expecting to get today.
Daisy sits next to me in the truck, half awake and scrolling through her phone as something plays over her headphones, and I sit with the music softer in the cab. It’s one of Rhea’s playlists, and I won’t admit it to her, but I love every song on it. They’re all stringy guitars and no drums, but there’s still so much feeling in them. I hate that she’s so easily able to change all of my habits.
Infuriating.
I pull up the trail and put the truck in park in the small, dirt parking lot before I offload the canoe and get it set up in the water. Daisy carries down the box and hands it to me with a little grumbly sigh as she realizes the service is crap this far from the city. I wish I could say it’s an accident, but it's really just a way to get her to talk to me without the buffer of the screen between us.
It takes us a second, and she argues about what side she wants to sit on, but once we’re on the water, I row us to the middle of the lake and stow the paddle inside.
“Dad.” Daisy squints at me from across the canoe. “I just want you to know I hate fishing more than I hate when Mom hosts study parties for every test I have.”
I stifle the laugh that forms in the base of my throat;of course, Riona throws parties around studying.
“Seriously, if this is some sick plan to teach me discipline, or… I don’t know, patience. It’s not going to work.” She crosses her arms.
“I didn’t bring you out here to fish, Squish.” I set the pole between my legs as the sun starts to come up over the trees.
“Okay, well…” she shrugs, pointing to the fishing rod with a scowl on her face that I can’t even get mad at because I gave it to her. “It’s five am on a Saturday, and if you didn’t bring me out here to fish, what are we doing?”
“You brought your book?” I ask her, my eyes drifting to the bag between her feet. I know she did, I watch her put the ratty sketch journal in there every morning before school. She nods, “Take it out, I’ll fish, you draw.”
Daisy studies my expression for a long moment before tucking a chunk of her unruly blonde hair behind her ear and doing what she’s told. She balances the book on her lap alongside the container of pencils she has.
“Fish aren’t really my area of inspiration,” she admits.
“Not the fish, Daisy.” I laugh, and the canoe rumbles beneath us. “Just look around you, find something. Birds, trees, wildlife, flowers,” I give her plenty of examples, and she starts to get the idea. “Look,” I direct her eye line to the shore where a doe steps out of the tree line with her fawn.
“Wow,” Daisy whispers, her fingers gently moving the pages without taking her eyes off the deer. “Okay, that’s cool, you win,” she mumbles. “This time,” she adds quietly, and the scratch of her pencils fills the air, tangling with the soft ripples of the water.
I don’t even like fishing. But I don’t tell her that.There’s something methodical about it; cast it out, reel it in.I actually don’t even really like the taste of fish.But I needed the quiet, and it’s been too long since Daisy, and I just did something together. Sometimes I stare at her and can’t figure out where the time has gone. I remember when she was barely able to stand; her diaper was always lopsided, matching that big, goofy, toothless smile. Riona used to pull her hair into these tiny little pig tails that were all thin curls and stuck off the top of her head.
Now she’s a teenager.
Her hair falls in her face as she keeps one eye on the deer and the other on her book. She kept that goofy smile, even though I don’t get to see it as much anymore, but she has gained so much more. She’s her own personality now, and some days it feels like I missed her figuring out what that looks like.
The guilt is violent. The scales feel unbalanced.
You left so you could give her this, versusyou left.
It’s hard to explain to your toddler why you’re leaving, rationalizing abandonment for the betterment of her life. It wouldn’t have made sense to her; it barely makes sense to her now. Riona and I were two halves of a whole once. An unshakeable team. If you told twenty-year-old me that Riona Cody couldn’t even look at me anymore, I’d scorch the earth to prove you wrong. But I’d left with my half, promising to return it to her—then it came home in a coffin. Nothing but ash. And not even Riona could fix that.
“You know your mom deserves a little more credit, even if she is a nerd,” I huff, and Daisy’s brows pinch together as a tiny smile forms on her lips, but she doesn’t look up from her book as I reel in air on the line.Again.
“I dare you to say that to her face,” Daisy snorts.
“I’ve called your mom a nerd to her face.”
