“Cab-nee,” she says.
“Cabinet,” I repeat.
I hear Charlie’s boots on the stairs, and then I hear him walking around.
She looks at me, her expression solemn. “Cab-ney.”
“Mmmhm,” I murmur. Sarah turns and looks around.
“Where?” she squawks. “Dad gone?”
“Hey, did you see this?” I redirect her attention by pulling open a drawer. “Look.”
Her face grows curious. “Wha?”
I close the drawer, then open it again. She comes over and places her tiny hand over mine, pushing it until the drawer closes. Then she looks up at me.
“It work,” she says, serious as death.
“Yes, it does.” I pull the drawer open again, and she watches me with solemn eyes.
I hear Charlie thundering down the stairs, and a few seconds later he reappears in the kitchen.
“Da!” Sarah squeals, throwing her arms up. “Hold!”
Charlie scoops her up. She looks utterly delighted. There is something about the way her tiny fist clutches at his hoodie that makes my throat thick with an emotion I cannot name.
“I like it,” he says to me. “I’d prefer not to be on a lease. I’ll pay more if I have to. Assuming that you’ll have us, that is.”
“Well, I wasn’t planning on letting this place out so soon… so I don’t have a lease yet anyway,” I say with a shrug. “How’s… eight hundred a month sound?”
He doesn’t react, just shrugs back. “Alright. First and last month’s rent as deposit?”
My eyes widen. That’s a lot of money. Then again, he did say that it was no issue. “Sure.”
“Can I move in right now?” he asks.
“Now,” Sarah repeats, then cracks up laughing. It’s hard not to grin.
“Yeah, sure. You have a lot of stuff?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “We probably have less than six bags each, and that’s about it.”
“Really?” I ask, surprised.
“Really,” he says, reaching for his wallet. He skillfully manages to pull a wad of cash from his wallet while Sarah finds the cord of his hoodie and pulls it. He counts it, then hands some of it over. “Here you go. That should be about sixteen hundred.”
He pushes the money into my hands. “Great. Here are the keys. Want me to watch Sarah while you move your bags inside?”
“Nah,” he says. “We’ll be just fine.”
“Alright,” I say with a shrug. “I’ll see you guys around. Bye, Sarah.”
Sarah says a string of nonsense words, but I take it as goodbye. I walk back around the house to my ladder, scrunching my face at it.
Somehow, it seems a lot less interesting than it did an hour ago. I move the ladder over and climb up it again. If I climb to the very top and get on my tiptoes, I can just see Charlie and Sarah, going back and forth across the green grass, presumably to whatever vehicle he has.
Charlie is basically a giant question mark to me, albeit a handsome one. Still, I can’t say that I’m not glad to have some eye candy…
And Sarah is friggin precious, in the bargain.
I sigh and go back to chipping black gunk off the eaves.
3
Charlie
I wake up the next morning to two year old Sarah staring down at me with a frown. I put her to sleep in her Pack N Play, but obviously she’s outgrown that, since she’s climbing on my chest right now.
I just lie there for a second, feeling the sweat from my nightmare making my cotton t-shirt and pajama bottoms cling to my body. The room that we’re in feels weird, and it takes me a second to remember that we’ve never slept here before.
Sarah peers down at me, her dark hair a wild mess. She has her mother’s looks, which make my heart ache every time I look at her.
“Ream?” she asks.
“Dream, yeah,” I sigh, moving her to the side and sitting up. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Sleep!” she chirps.
“Do you need to go to the bathroom?”
Sarah thinks about that, then shakes her head. “No.”
I eye her with skepticism. She started potty training herself about a month ago. I’m always a little weirded out to find out she went to the bathroom by herself.
“I frush,” she says, matter of factly. I interpret that to mean that she did go by herself.
“Alright. Are you hungry?” I ask, moving to my feet.
“Yeah!!” she says, instantly cheerful at the mention of a meal. What can I say, the kid loves food.
“Okay. Let’s pick some clothes out, then,” I say, offering her my hand.
We go through the minutiae of an early morning routine. I manage to distract her with dry cereal and cartoons on my iPad for long enough to grab an ultra quick shower.
In a way, it’s good that I’m busy trying to bathe Sarah, or trying to help her pick out clothes. Because I can’t worry about what I plan to do next, which is to show up unannounced at my dad’s house with Sarah in tow.
My dad has been estranged from me since I decided to join the Army, almost ten years ago. We fell out because I asked him to look in on Mom occasionally while I was at boot camp.
“There is a reason I divorced her,” he snarled at me. “Bitch is fucking crazy.”
But not too crazy to leave your young son with, I guess, I thought.
Yeah, better to worry about packing enough snacks and backup pairs of underwear for Sarah. I’ve become the master of swallowing my fears, worrying about what’s in front of me as opposed to anything in the future.
An hour and a half after she wakes me up, we’re both dressed and as ready as we’re going to get. I carry Sarah, my laptop bag, and her diaper bag outside.
I squint against the early morning light as I make my way to my sedan. I see the landlady, Larkin, locking her door.
I
