“They’re the biggest.”
“What about redwoods?”
“What’s a redwood?”
“It’s a tree. Very, very tall.”
She considers this with the gravity of someone evaluating a competing thesis. “I like sunflowers better.”
“Fair enough. What’s your favorite food?”
“Macaroni and cheese.”
“The boxed kind or the real kind?”
“Dad makes the kind in the box.”
“Ah, an epicurean. Gotcha.”
Her feet start to drag after the third block. Her steps get shorter, her grip on his hand gets heavier, and she’s listing to one side, the lean of a child who is fighting sleep and losing. Sidney scoops her up without asking, one arm under her legs and one at her back, and she’s light. She settles against his shoulder and her arms loop around his neck and she’s warm in the way that children are warm, radiating heat and trust in equal measure, and the trust is doing something to Sidney’s chest that he wasn’t prepared for. He adjusts his hold and carries her the last block.
His apartment building is five stories of brick with ivy growing up the side and a secured front door that requires a code he has to punch in one-handed because his other arm is occupied. The hallway carpet is the ugliest shade of mauve he’s ever seen. He’slived here for three years and the carpet has never improved. He makes it to the fourth floor, manages the deadbolt with one hand and a creative use of his elbow, and lets them in.
The apartment is small. One bedroom, a kitchen barely wide enough for two people, a living room with a couch and a coffee table and a bookshelf that’s mostly empty because Sidney doesn’t read as much as he’d like to pretend he does. He sets Penny on the couch and pulls the blanket from the back of it over her legs and she blinks at him, drowsy and unfocused, assessing this new environment with the bleary efficiency of someone who has just woken up in a new place and is deciding whether to be concerned. She appears to decide she is not.
“Do you have any cookies?” she asks.
Sidney goes to the kitchen and opens the cabinet. He has golden Oreos, which are what he keeps on hand because they’re the superior Oreo and he will fight anyone who disagrees, but he can see from the look on Penny’s face when he brings them over that she has strong opinions about this.
“These aren’t real Oreos,” she says, taking one.
“They are absolutely real Oreos. They’re the golden variety.”
“They’re wrong.”
“They’re all I’ve got, kiddo.”
She eats four of them. Her disapproval does not extend to her appetite.
He pours her a glass of milk and sits on the floor beside the couch, because the couch is her space now and the floor is the appropriate distance for someone who is not trying to crowd a child he’s known for two hours. He finds the remote and flips through channels until he lands on something animated and colorful that he hopes is appropriate for five-year-olds. It involves a cat with a sword, which seems aggressive for children’s programming, but Penny’s eyes light up and she says“It’s Blinky Cat!” with enough enthusiasm that Sidney decides not to question it.
He leans his back against the couch and lets the noise wash over him and tries to figure out what exactly he’s supposed to do with a five-year-old overnight. He doesn’t have kids. He’s never had kids. His experience with children is limited to the occasional family that wanders into Willow’s before realizing it’s not that kind of bar, and one deeply unfortunate babysitting job when he was sixteen that ended with a fire extinguisher and a promise to never speak of it again.
Blinky Cat ends. Something else starts, something with a rabbit and a lot of yelling. Penny sets her milk down and shifts on the couch and says, “I’m bored.”
“You’re bored? You’ve been here for ten minutes.”
“That’s a long time.”
Sidney looks around his apartment. He does not have toys. He does not have coloring books, or crayons, or anything remotely designed for the entertainment of a child. What he has is a bottle of bourbon, a houseplant he’s been forgetting to water for three months, and the lingering sense that he is deeply unprepared for this situation.
“What do you want to do?” he asks, because he’s out of ideas and she’s five and probably has better ones.
Penny looks at his feet. Then she looks at his hands. Then she looks back at his feet.
“Can I paint your nails?”
“My nails?”
