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  Poppy beams as all her hair whips from side to side.

  A wave of guilt attacks me. Poppy is right. We do have a deal. By not spending time with my daughter this evening, I just broke it.

  This thing between me and Skye – whatever it is – I’ve got to get control over it. I can’t let any woman – no matter how attractive, no matter how alluring – stand in between me and my daughter.

  “What’s that, daddy?” Poppy asks after a couple moments of silence.

  I blink, clear my head, and look up, refocusing my eyes. “What’s what, kiddo?”

  Poppy juts her chin at the kitchen island, at the gray notebook sitting on top – the one Skye gave me.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I lie. “It’s just… a work thing.”

  “What kind of work thing,” Poppy continues to ask.

  “The kind of work thing I’ll tell you about tomorrow,” I say sternly, uttering my own little white lie. “Because it’s so far past your bedtime I’m wondering if I’m seeing things! Surely you’re just a figment of my imagination, aren’t you?” I wink.

  I wink, but in truth I’ve dodged a bullet. I left the journal Skye gave me lying about, just tossed it onto the counter because I wasn’t prepared to deal with what it represented.

  Poppy pouts, but gives in. I knew she would. She’s a good girl.

  “Will you tuck me in, at least?” She says with pleading eyes. Now, how can I resist her when she asks me like that?

  “Sure thing, kiddo,” I say with one last ruffle of her silken hair. “Let’s go.”

  “And –”

  “No bedtime story,” I growl, eyes sparkling to let her know I’m joking, as I put her down.

  Poppy scampers off light-footedly, and I follow in her footsteps. As I tuck her into bed, all I think about is how her mother and I used to do this together, when Poppy was just a baby. For the first time in years, a tear burns at the corner of my eye.

  Poppy frowns up at me from the darkness of her bedroom. “Everything okay, daddy?” She asks.

  I close my eyes for a second, straighten my expression, and then look down at her. I need to be strong for my daughter, and in front of my daughter. I need to shelter her from all the darkness in this world. That’s a father’s only job, my only reason for living. Especially when Ashley, my one-time wife, no longer is.

  “Everything is fine, kiddo.”

  “Okay, daddy,” and Poppy smiles. “Hey…you know something?”

  “What.”

  “I’m going to be ten next week, daddy.”

  I adopt a mock-surprised expression. “You, ten? No way.”

  “Yes way!” Poppy protests. “I’m growing up and you can’t stop me.” She smiles, but then the expression falters on her face.

  “Don’t be silly, kiddo. Of course I remember,” I grin hurriedly, assuming my daughter is disappointed because she thinks I’ve forgotten her big day is coming up. “You think I’d forget a day like that?”

  “It’s not that,” Poppy mumbles, turning her face away and hiding it in a pillow.

  “Then what is it?” I ask feeling a touch concerned. My daughter’s got a lot of me in her. We don’t show emotion too easily. So this … this is unusual.

  “It’s just,” Poppy says into her pillow. “Mom’s not gonna be there, is she?”

  A lance of sadness cuts right through me, like a burning arrow aimed straight through my heart. I let out a deep sigh. No matter how hard I try, the one thing I cannot provide for my daughter is her mother.

  “Oh, Poppy,” I whisper, sitting down on her low-sunk bed. “I wish I could lie to you. I wish there was something I could say that could bring your momma back. Every single day I wish we were a family. But –”

  “But you can’t,” Poppy mumbles in a low, broken voice that radiates her pain. She rolls over in bed, pulling the covers tight around her tiny neck and my heart breaks when I see her tear-stained face. “It’s alright, daddy. Thanks for tucking me in. I’ll go to bed now.”

  “Poppy…” I say.

  But what the hell am I supposed to say? There aren’t any right words to express how broken I still am over Ashley’s death. And there’s nothing I can do to bring her back.

  Nothing.

  No matter how much money I make, there’s nothing I can do to make us a family again. I can’t turn back the clock. I wasn’t there to save my wife. That’s a wound I’ll have to bear for the rest of my life.

  I lean forward and embrace Poppy’s tiny frame in a bear hug. My voice has abandoned me, my brain has ossified and shattered in my head. This is all I can do to show my baby girl the she’s not alone in this world.

  But it’s not enough.

  “You wanted a bedtime story, kiddo?” I say. I start talking without knowing where I’m going. The very next word is alien to me, it’s like someone else has taken control of my mouth, my lungs, my brain.

  “Daddy, it’s alright,” Poppy whispers. “You don’t need to.”

  “But you do,” I say.

  And maybe I need it, too.

  “Your mom was the bravest girl I’ve ever known,” I say in a voice that’s barely more than a whisper.

  Hell, it hurts to speak, but I know I have to. I have to push through the pain, because Poppy’s old enough to know what happened to her mom.

  “Even –?”

  “Even braver than you,” I say with a half-cough, half-laugh, grateful for the light relief. “Or maybe you’re just about as brave, Pops.”

  Poppy just looks up at me from her bundle of sheets. Her eyes are trained on me – dark and sparkling from hot tears that still threaten to leak out. I talk because I need to, because I’m unloading seven years of hurt on a girl who might be strong enough to take it – but definitely needs to know.

  Because, Ashley Wolfe was a hero.

  And she was the best goddamn woman I’ve ever known.

  “We met years ago. Before you were even a twinkle in my eye,” I whisper, ruffling Poppy’s hair. “She was a medic, did you know that?”

  Poppy nods, with the look in her eyes that says, daddy, you’ve told me a thousand times. But it’s also a look that tells me she wants to hear it all over again.

  “Yeah, a rifle-bearing, pack-humping, chest-thumping Marine Corps combat medic. Well, Navy actually. Heck, you don’t need to know the details, just that your mom was the kind of girl who’d follow you into a burning building with bullets flying and not even blink once.”

  I pause as a wave of memory threatens to sink me. Poppy lays her hand on my arm, as if she knows. A pang of guilt overcomes me, and I wonder for the thousandth time whether I should be sharing something this heavy with a girl so young.

  But I press on, because, that’s what Ashley would’ve done. Because, that’s what Ashley would have wanted me to do.

  “She shipped out when you were just a baby,” I say. “What a family, eh. Your daddy, jumping out of helicopters into the sea and swimming onto beaches; your mom, running around the desert, dodging bullets and helping save Marines’ lives.”

  “She did?”

  I nod, and my chest clenches with the memory of receiving the folded flag that summed up my wife’s life. As if it could. She was so much more than just a scrap of cloth, no matter how sacred.

  “She did. I’ve got a shoebox stuffed full of letters from the men and women whose lives she saved.”

  “Can I read them?” Poppy whispers hesitantly.

  My lips form to tell my daughter no – that they are full of coarse language, words I don’t ever want her saying, no matter how old she gets.

  But then I relent. Because how can I hide the last piece of my dead wife’s soul from the daughter she left behind? I can’t.

  “Of course, baby,” I say, “we can do that together when it’s time. You know, your mom would have been so proud of you. I know she would.”

  There’s a pause, and then Poppy asks me the question I’ve been dreading since she was a baby.

  “Daddy,” she
murmurs in a voice that’s barely audible. “How did she die? How did mom die?”

  I close my eyes and I’m taken straight back to the desert – to the smell of aviation fuel in the air, the buzz of helicopters, of trash burning in barrels and of unrelenting Middle Eastern heat. I’m taken back to the day she died, the day I heard that Ashley’s Humvee hit an IED on the way back to base.

  To the day I talked my way onto a helicopter to be by her side, only to get to the base hospital to find no one there.

  “She died a hero,” I say with my eyes squeezed shut – telling my daughter the truth.

  And then I hear myself, hear what I’m saying – just a useless platitude. People have told me the same thing for a decade, that Ashley died a hero. They mean well, every one.

  Yes, it’s true. And yet it isn’t.

  Ashley Wolfe didn’t die a hero. She died a mother, and a wife – a woman who had so much more life to live, and so much more love to give. She died without ever hearing her daughter speak her first words. She died without seeing Poppy walk, or go to school for the first time.

  A tear rolls down my cheek.

  “She died loving you,” I say, hugging my daughter tight. “The people who killed her, they weren’t so bad, just misguided. Your mom told me off every time I said they were bad. They were just ordinary people in a horrible place. But believe me, Poppy – your mom died loving you. Don’t ever wonder about or be ashamed of that.”

  I wait there until Poppy’s sad, broken breathing becomes smooth, then peaceful with sleep. Until the end, every time it hits that hitch in her chest where her breath catches on her grief, I feel the same lance of pain burn through me.

  Then I pad out of her room.

  This time it’s my turn for hot tears to burn their way down my cheeks. I’m a strong man. I’m a proud man. But I’m not too proud to admit that what just happened in my daughter’s bedroom cut me right to the bone.

  It cut deeper than that, even.

  I walk back to the kitchen and pour a tumbler of whiskey – my body acting on autopilot. I knock it back, and then pour another, shaky hands spilling droplets to either side. The alcohol burns its way down my throat. It hurts, but the pain is just a fraction of The Grief I’ve carried for the last decade.

  It’s The Grief that’s rearing its ugly head once more.

  Then I see it…

  …The Journal.

  Damn, I’m even thinking about it in capital letters.

  The gray notebook sits there on my counter, fucking daring me to open it. The alcohol simmers in my veins, and I know it’s affecting my emotions, but I can’t help myself. I’m burning up, bubbling over. There’s one question I can’t keep in the dark, one question I can’t dodge.

  What the hell am I doing with Skye?

  I have to raise a daughter. Maybe I should swear off women for good. Or at least until Poppy turns eighteen…

  I stride toward the journal, blood boiling. Somehow it’s a symbol of every pain that has been inflicted on me all these years – of losing Ashley, of raising Poppy alone.

  Of everything.

  I pick it up. I throw it across the room. It hits the glass walls of my penthouse suite. It slides down. It lands in a crumpled puddle on the floor.

  Read that.

  Chapter Seven

  Skye

  My legs are aching by the time I make it back to my cramped – but homey – apartment. The elevator is out – unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence – so I’m forced to trudge my way up three flights of stairs.

  Just a few more steps, I reassure myself. Then you can curl up in bed and forget everything…

  Instead, I’m greeted by the sight of a man slumped against my front door. His hair shines with a thin layer of grease, and his neck is cricked at an angle that is sure to leave him aching in the morning. I flinch, and let out a sigh.

  The man’s body doesn’t react to the sound. In fact, the only evidence that he’s alive at all is the faint rise and fall of his chest.

  “Oh, dad…”

  As I groan, my head falls forward with dismay. This isn’t the first time my father has turned up here like this, and I would put money on it not being the last.

  But that doesn’t make it any easier. This isn’t how family is supposed to work – parents aren’t supposed to become alcoholic wrecks. And if they do, they are sure as heck not supposed to let their kids find out.

  I guess I’m not a kid any longer.

  I stop just shy of the landing, one foot teasing the final step. I try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do. I breathe against the back of my hand, and smell the sweet mixture of rum and Coke on my breath.

  “Crap,” I mutter. My mind races, a faint hint of adrenaline quickly clearing my tipsiness. I start to react – body moving on autopilot. My legs are still heavy, but I push through. I’ve been here before. I’ve lived this life a thousand times.

  I cross the landing and carefully step over my dad’s prone, unconscious body. The smell of alcohol spills off his clothes in waves – acrid, burning. It grates against the inside of my nostrils. I wrinkle my nose.

  My key tangles with the lock, giving off a metallic grinding sound. I wince at the sound. I can’t wake dad, not yet. He’s not a mean drunk – but I don’t want him to smell the alcohol on my breath.

  It’s better that way.

  I inch the door open, scarcely daring to breathe. My shoulders hunch forward, as though I’m hiding from something or someone – the man slumped beneath me. I feel like a cat burglar entering my own home.

  Dad coughs, and then chokes, as his body slowly slides down my wooden front door. I look down, desperate for him not to wake up, not yet. He comes to rest against the floor. One heartbeat, another, it looks like he hasn’t awoken.

  I’ve got time.

  I step through the open doorway, biting down on my need to breathe. I tiptoe across the room, and turn the tap in the kitchen on – but just to a trickle.

  But even that’s enough.

  “Skye!” Dad shouts, as though he’s been startled out of an awful nightmare.

  I spin around to see an awful, macabre spectacle playing out in the doorway to my apartment. His body jerks upward, and then his head collides with the wooden landing floorboards with a thud. He moans in pain.

  “Skye,” he croaks again. His hand forms a fist, and he thumps it against the floorboards. The wood resounds like a drum. “I know you’re in there, Skye…open up. Don’t make me – ”

  I get my head under the stream of running water, fill my mouth and quickly rinse my teeth. The last thing I need is for my dad to smell the alcohol on my breath. Right now he’s coming down. But if he realizes that I’ve been drinking as well, I know what’ll happen. He’ll try and cajole me into drinking with him.

  I never would, of course. It’s just that I can’t stand it when he begs. He’s never less of a man – a father – than then.

  “Keep it down out there, asshole,” a voice calls from somewhere else in the building, “or I’m calling the cops.”

  I spring into action, strangely spurred on more by the prospect of getting a noise warning than anything else. It’s hard to invest myself too deeply in dad’s made up problems, these days. I’ve been burned way too many times to care.

  “Why don’t you shut up,” my dad mumbles. Then, louder: “Skye, open up girl. It’s your daddy.”

  “Dad!” I hiss as I cross my living room, biting my lip as I wonder whether to even let the man in. He’s my father – but more in body than spirit. The man he once was disappeared a long time ago.

  “You’ve been drinking again, dad,” I say. My lips move through the now rote sentences. It’s hard to get too invested into what I’m saying. We’ve been down this road so many times before. “You promised me – ”

  My dad looks up. From down there on the floor, he looks like a baby. His face – aged by alcohol – suddenly seems childlike.

  “I let you down again, baby,” he moans, fi
ngernails scrabbling against the wooden flooring in a desperate attempt to move him into a seated position. “I know I did. Will you let your daddy in… just this once?”

  He moves slowly, reactions worn world-weary by the alcohol coursing through his system. Yet strangely he doesn’t seem too unsteady. I guess he has spent so many years pouring liquor down his throat that it doesn’t affect him like ordinary men, not anymore.

  I glance up at the living room clock. Damn it. It’s already a quarter past one in the morning. I know from long, bitter experience that this night is only just beginning.

  “Okay, get in here, dad,” I say. “Now!”

  I try hard to bite it down, but a hint of my irritation comes out. More than a hint. And yet it seems to work. He winces, and then at least attempts to apply some kind of discipline to his expression.

  “Can you give me a hand up, baby,” he whimpers, looking up at me helplessly. “My legs aren’t working like they used to.”

  “That’s the drink, dad,” I grunt irritably. And yet … and yet I do it anyway. Because what the hell else am I going to do? What the hell else can any child do but help their parent?

  For all his sins, despite whatever Robert Warren has done in his life, he’s still my father. And I know that I’d never be able to forgive myself for not helping him.

  I reach out my hand. My dad takes it with blubbering eyes, and I pull him up to wobbly feet.

  “Thanks, baby,” he grunts, sending a stream of super-heated, alcohol-laced breath crashing against my face like waves colliding with boulders on a rocky beach. “Just … just don’t look at me, okay?”

  His tone is quiet, low, even ashamed.

  “Why not, dad” I ask, struggling for breath as I help carry him into my apartment.

  “I know what you think of me,” he says, slurring for the first time. “I know I’ve let you down.”

  “You haven’t, dad,” I say, kicking the door shut behind me. It’s a lie – a white one, maybe – but a lie nonetheless. The truth is, my father has let me down – tonight, and so many other nights, and he knows it.

  It might even be the guilt that’s eating him up inside – the guilt that he hides from through the haze of alcohol, or the guilt that’s driving him to drink.