Page 92 of Vandal Unbound

“You and your mama are staying here so I can look after you,” I tell her. “And because I want you here. But your momma decides what happens to you. Always.”

Her finger strokes her bear’s ear. “But can I keep my room?”

I smile at that. “Yeah. You can keep your room. But if you ever had to leave for any reason, you could take all this with you.”

She runs her hand over her pillow. “Even if I accidentally spill juice?”

I almost smile wider, but the question is asked so earnestly that I muster a serious face to respond. “This house was built to withstand a hurricane, I’m sure it’ll survive a splash of juice.”

Elsie pauses, flipping onto her back, then rolling to face me again. “Are you gonna be my dad? Because Jodie lives with her mom and dad.”

My first instinct is to look for Daisy, like maybe she could step in here. But I don’t want to be a coward with Elsie, ever. “Becoming someone’s dad is a real honor. And it’s something that you work on, together. Getting to know each other.”

“Like their favorite color?” Elsie asks.

“Yeah. Favorite color. What they like best for breakfast. Favorite movie of all time. So, here’s what we’re gonna do: I’m gonna look after you and your mom. I’m gonna show up when I say I’m gonna show up, and I’m going to learn all those things about you, and you’re gonna learn all those things about me. And I’m going to do the same with your momma. And then we’ll decide if we think we like each other and love each other enough to be a family for real.”

Elsie switches onto her back again; I swear she flip-flops around more than a loose fish in the bottom of a boat. “I already know I love you, Vandal.”

My heart bursts, like fully explodes. “Then I’m the luckiest man there is. If you ever need me, you call me like you did, and I’ll come get you.”

I don’t tell her I love her. Not because I don’t. But it feels wrong to toy with a little girl’s affection while me and her mom are figuring out what we mean to each other.

Elsie yawns, then blinks hard like she’s fighting sleep. “I don’t want your eye to fix.”

That knocks me sideways. “Why not?”

She reaches up and touches her finger to the eye she patches. “Because then we’re the same.”

I can’t breathe for a second. All day people have been telling me that the swelling is getting better. And that with time and more treatment, the blur will ease. Yet, I find myself wanting it to stay the same because the broken part of me makes her feel less alone.

“Elsie, sweetheart.”

She grabs her bear and scoots closer, pressing herself into my side. So I shift back against the headboard and gather her in. She’s tiny and warm and trusting as she lays her cheek against my ribs.

“Did you cry when you hurt your eye?”

I swallow deeply before I answer. “Yeah, Els. I did.”

“But you’re so brave,” she says. There’s such wholesomeness in her words that I force myself to look to the window until I can trust myself not to cry right now.

“Brave people cry too. It’s okay to express how you feel.”

She thinks about that and then snuggles closer. “You can cry in here with me if you ever want to.”

Fuck.

I press my mouth to the top of her head. I don’t know what the rules are for this. I only know she smells like strawberry shampoo.

“Momma sings me songs sometimes to help me sleep.”

Songs I can do. I think about the songs Mom would sing to me. So, I sing Def Leppard’s “Two Steps Behind.” Telling Elsie through softly sung lyrics that wherever she goes, I’ll be two steps behind her and how there’s magic at her very core. I skip the lines I’d forgotten that would make my take on the song weird in this context.

In between verses, Elsie looks up with sleepy eyes. “Today has been the best day of my life.”

I smile at that and keep singing until she flops against me in sleep.

And even then, I keep singing until the song is done.