Page 57 of Knights Like These
Lily is a different operation. She wants to be tucked in a specific way—blanket up to her chin, giraffe on the left side, notthe right, nightlight on the one that looks like a moon, not the star—and then she wants to talk.
“Daddy.”
“Yeah, Lil.”
“Are you sad?”
I stop straightening her blanket. “What?”
“You look sad.” She scrunches up her entire face—eyebrows down, mouth flat, jaw tight—and holds it for three seconds. It’s a disturbingly accurate impression.
“I’m not sad,” I say.
“You and Syd are being weird.”
“We’re not being weird.”
“You are. You don’t sit on the couch together anymore. And you don’t laugh.” She looks at me with her mother’s eyes, steady and unblinking. “Did you have a fight?”
“No, Lil. We didn’t have a fight.”
“Then why are you sad?”
I sit on the edge of her bed and brush the hair off her forehead as she watches me. She’s too perceptive, this kid. She reads rooms the way Luke reads books—thoroughly, seriously, missing nothing.
“Sometimes grown-ups have a lot on their minds,” I say. “It doesn’t mean anything is wrong.”
“Okay.” She considers this. “Can you tell Syd to come say goodnight?”
“She already said goodnight, Lil.”
“I want her to say it again.”
“Once is enough.”
She pulls Jeffrey the giraffe closer to her chest.
“Go to sleep, Lily.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too, bug.”
I kiss her forehead, turn off the overhead light, and stand in the hallway, looking at the guest room door.
The light is on underneath it. She’s in there reading, probably. Or maybe texting with Lauren. Or lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling the way I’ve been staring at mine every night this week.
I knock before I can talk myself out of it.
Silence. Then I hear her soft voice. “Yeah?”
“Can I come in?”
A longer silence. Long enough that I almost walk away, and then the door opens. She’s standing there in her sleep shorts and an old t-shirt, her hair pulled back, her face bare. She looks tired in a way that has nothing to do with sleep.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
