troublewillfindme

Sally wants to be just like him, a thought that terrifies Will. His only comfort is that she doesn’t understand the implications of the sentence. There is so much she doesn’t know, can’t know. To her, it’s a harmless wish, one free from the horror it fills her father with.

It’s not that she wants to fight. It’s that she doesn’t want to standby, uselessly watching as the war rages around her without ever lifting a finger to do something.

She has more than her fair share of scars, signatures of someone else’s butchery. For the most part, they’re easy enough to hide, concealed by shirts and dresses and sweaters. Others can be obscured, made to look like a trick of the light.

The next time she joins him, it is with a pack of cards in hand.

“I’m crappy at poker, but do you wanna play?”

He wakes to Jane nuzzling at his hand. He understands the message well enough by now: Get up.

All things considered, he is lucky he is able to partake in fatherhood as much as he is. Despite his own skill deficits in the field, and the constraints imposed upon him by the need to keep Sally’s existence a secret, he finds he’s still able to indulge in the traditional rites of parenthood.

His kitchen table is presently the site of a vast Lego empire, constructed over the past several evenings. Her art work is on the refrigerator. They spend nice afternoons in the backyard, Sally having decided that the swing set he’d built for her is her kingdom. There are family dinners, such that they are, gathered around Jack’s table. At night, he reads her bedtime stories and tucks her in, promising to tell off any monsters that may emerge from under the bed.

They are happy — a concept he never quite imagined possible. Not in any real sense, at least.

“Why Marvin?”