Page 113 of How To Not Need You

I feel my faces reaction before I can mask it. A full wince, like she struck me. Which she did, but only emotionally. I compose myself as quickly as I can. Because Tilly isn’t asking about my relationship with Liv.

She’s asking if Liv is coming back to the house, to her. To her room, with its blue night light and its stuffed animals arranged in a defensive formation against the monsters she insists live under the bed. To the kitchen, where Liv makes goulash and argues about knife skills and lets Tilly steal capsicum when she thinks no one is looking. To the couch, where Liv reads stories about girls who fart and does the voices and laughs harder than Tilly does.

She’s asking if the person who carved out space in her life is going to keep showing up.

And I don’t have an answer. Not a real one. Not one I can promise. That in itself is devastating. Tilly and Liv have become closer than I ever dared to hope for.

“I hope so, sweetie.”

Tilly looks at me. Her blue eyes, so much like Megan’s, hold mine with a steadiness that belongs to someone twice her age. She looks at Megan, before turning back to me. Then she completely takes me by surprise. Her face doesn’t hold any trace of sadness or fear, just the exhaustion that I am sure I would see reflected back if I looked in the mirror.

She states simply, “grown-ups are stupid.” Then she turns away. Just like that.

No storming off, no tears, no dramatic exit. She simply pivots on her mismatched socks and walks back down the hallway with Hades still clutched against her chest, his tail dragging along the floorboards behind them like a furry banner of surrender.

I stay crouched.

My knees have officially given up complaining and moved on to outright rebellion, but I don’t stand. I just stare at the empty hallway where my daughter just told me, in the plainest terms possible, that I have disappointed her.

Megan, beside me, says, “Well.”

I look up at her. “Did our daughter just tell me off?”

“Pretty sure she told both of us off.” There’s a note in Megan’s voice I haven’t heard before. Something between amusement and respect. “The ‘grown-ups’ was plural.”

“She’s never done that before.”

“She’s getting older.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Welcome to parenting.”

We stand in the hallway for another moment. Then her bedroom door clicks shut. Not a slam. Just a quiet, deliberate click. Somehow that’s worse than a slam would have been.

A slam I could handle. A slam means she is angry. A slam is emotion I can work with. This, this quiet, closing of a door, is my five-year-old daughter demonstrating a level of emotional restraint that I, a thirty-five-year-old man, currently do not possess.

Megan leans down and squeezes my arm once. Her hand is warm through the sleeve of my T-shirt.

“Good luck with that,” she says with a half laugh. Megan glances towards the open door, then checks the time on her phone.

“I should go. I’ve got a showing in twenty minutes.”

“Go.”

“Sorry again for dropping her back early.”

I shake my head. “You don't need to apologise. She's my kid too.”

“I know. But you’ve just finished sixty hours and I was supposed to keep her until tomorrow.”

“Meg, seriously. It’s fine.” She nods, but doesn't move straight away.

“And Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“Good luck with Liv.”