Page 30 of Justice

“Doesn’t your sister look so pretty?” Skye called out to Storie.

Storie was in the kitchen on her phone scrolling. As if Skye had interrupted her from the most important, dire task ever, she looked up and rolled her eyes. However, Skye was too focused on Dream to notice.

“She look cute or whatever,” Storie replied flatly.

“Storie…” My voice was low and stern.

“What, Daddy?”

I gave her that look that said keep fuckin’ with me and there’ll be hell to pay.

She quickly got up and headed towards her sister and Skye. “You really look like a princess…. Fiona!” Storie cracked up laughing and then playfully tickled her sister.

“No, I don’t!” Dream protested.

“No, you don’t. You look better than Cinderella, Belle and Tiana all wrapped up in one,” Storie replied.

The tension in my chest relaxed because I thought we were about to have a problem.

“Thank you! You look pretty too,” Dream replied.

“So daddy… When I turn sixteen,” she said, redirecting her attention to me, “can I have a real party? A big one. Since y’all ain’t do nothing for my fifteenth and you’re doing all of this for her sixth?”

“As long as you check that attitude of yours and keep your grades up. I’ll throw you a party that rivals that show My Super Sweet 16.”

“What’s that?” She asked and I had to remind myself she was too young to even know what that show was.

“Just know that you have to earn a big party. Dream has been a good girl. I cancelled your fifteenth because you were running around actin’ like you ain’t have no home training.”

She sucked her teeth and looked down at her shoes.

“You know why. It wasn’t to be cruel, Storie. I don’t do nothing to be cruel, that ain’t in me. But you been acting terrible for months. Your actions have consequences. And I’d be failing you as your father, if I let you grow up thinking it worked any other way.” I looked dead at her. “That’s not me withholding love from you. That’s me letting you know, you have to earn shit.”

Her face cracked open. For a second I swore I saw her in there, the little girl, the one who used to fall asleep on my chest.

“You’re right, Daddy.” Soft. Smooth. Easy as anything. “I understand.”

And I should’ve felt some kind of way about that. A man wants to hear his child say you’re right, I hear you. But it went down wrong. Like a line she’d rehearsed in a mirror instead of a thing she actually felt down in her chest. And that cold little thought crept across me before I could slam the door on it, the same one that kept creeping lately.

Since when does Storie fold that easy?

But I ain’t have time to sit in it. Because right then my front door swung open with no knock, no warning, no nothing, and Kira walked her ass up in my house.

Storie’s face did a thing when she clocked her. Small. There and gone, a little drop at the corners of her mouth before that flat mask slid right back down over it.

“Hey, baby!” Kira came at Storie arms wide open, all sugar. “Look at you. Happy birthday to your sister, you excited or what?”

She wrapped my oldest up in a hug. And Storie stood there in it stiff as a two-by-four, arms pinned to her sides, and did not give that woman one solitary inch. Kira let go after a beat that stretched out too long and covered it with one of them bright little laughs people do when they been left hanging.

Then she turned to me. And the hug she brought over to me was an entire different mood.

She came in close. Both arms up and around my neck, her body pressed into mine one full second past friendly, her mouth grazing right up on my ear. “Hey, you.”

I took her by both arms and set her back off me. Gentle. But direct enough that she felt it.

“What you doing here, Kira?”

“Well, good afternoon to you too, sir.” That laugh again, lighter than whatever was sitting in her eyes. “I came to help. It’s a big day. Figured Dream could use all the hands she can get.”