My daughter nods. “Yeah, he’s real nice. He makes Momma all giggly.”
Giggly? Wonder if she’ll fucking giggle when I remove his head from his shoulders.
“What, ah . . . What are you gonna call him . . . if he and your momma get married?”
She holds the ball, her tiny features scrunched in contemplation. “Well, I’ll call him JD, o’course. That’s his name, silly.”
My breath comes out in a quick relieved burst, sounding like a gravelly chuckle. I catch Presley’s pass, then ask, “But you’re sure you like him?”
She stares at me for a moment.
Thinking.
“Do you not want me to like him, Daddy?”
Times like this never cease to amaze me. All the things we don’t say in front of children to preserve their innocence, the words we spell, the actions we hide so they don’t copy our bad habits. Like the way my father used to smoke behind the barn, out of view. But we could still smell it on him.
They don’t listen to what we say—they look at how we say it, picking up on the undercurrent of emotion like a sixth sense.
And they just know.
I don’t want to share my daughter’s affection with another man. But I also don’t want to tear her in half—make her choose between the two people she loves most in the world. It’s not her job to protect my feelings or her mother’s. It’s our job to protect hers.
And I hate myself just a little bit for the fact that she felt the need to ask.
I walk to her and kneel down so we’re eye level. “I want you to be happy, Presley—you and your momma. And I want you to tell me if the day ever comes that you’re not. But I never want you to feel that you can’t like him, or anyone, because of me. Does that make sense?”
“Will you be sad when Momma and JD get married?”
How the hell am I supposed to answer that one? Well, darling, I’m here to make sure that never happens.
I tip my hat back and deflect. “Will you?”
Her smile is shy, like she’s about to reveal a secret. “When I was little . . .”
“When was that?” I tease. “Last year?”
She pushes my shoulder playfully. “Nooo . . . when I was little . . . like five or six. I used to wish on the stars before I went to bed. After Momma tucked me in, I’d climb out, look out the window . . . and I’d wish for you to come home.”
A knot twists in my chest, tighter and tighter, until I can barely breathe past it.
“Or that you’d take me and Momma with you to DC and we’d stay there . . . forever.”
Jenny and I are good parents, I don’t doubt that . . . but it’s hard to hear that you’ve let your child down. To know they wished fervently for something that was actually in your power to give . . . but you just didn’t.
“I didn’t know you did that, Presley.” I avert my eyes and pick at the blades of grass. “Do you still wish that?”
“No.” She sighs thoughtfully. “You’re happy there. You have your office and the White House . . . and you have Jake. And Momma’s happy here. And now she has JD to keep her company.”
Great—Momma gets JD and I get Jake the fucking grouch. What’s wrong with this picture?
Then she perks up even more. “Plus, this way I get two Christmases—who in their right mind would be sad about that?”
I laugh outright. And pull her into my arms. “I love you, baby girl.”
She wraps her arms around my shoulders and squeezes with all her might. “I love you too.”
13
Sofia
Presley Shaw was everything I’d pictured she’d be, from the sound of her voice and the photographs that fill Stanton’s apartment. Vivacious, sweet, with a mischievous shine in her eyes that reminds me of her father.
I continued to work after Stanton popped in to tell me he was driving her back to Jenny’s parents’. I was still drafting a brief as the sunlight outside faded and the orange fireball in the sky slipped lower on the horizon.
I put my laptop away only when Mrs. Shaw came to collect me for dinner. The table was set, with Marshall, Mary, and Carter Shaw Sr., Stanton’s dad, already seated—it seems family dinners are a consistent thing, with a regularly set time. Mr. Shaw is a tall, burly man with a handsome, weathered face and stoic disposition. The strong, silent type. He’s older than his wife by about ten years, I’d guess, but there’s a tenderness in the way he looks at her and a devotion in her voice that tells me theirs is a happy marriage.
I was the center of attention, answering questions about my family, about growing up in Chicago, and regaling them with stories of DC courtroom shenanigans. In between bites of delicious pot roast and potatoes, they told me tales about Stanton—high school football glories, an adolescent prank that almost burned the house down, and how he broke his leg when he was five jumping off the roof because he was sure his Superman Underoos would give him the power to fly.
A place at the table was set for Stanton—but his chair remained empty.