I tried to justify it by saying he was on the clock anyway, but mostly I was just getting a little spoiled again. It hadn’t taken much of a leap for me to go from refusing any kind of help at all to accepting some, at least, when Baby Katie was born. The car had been the first and easiest to get used to; I never did like riding the bus.
“Hey, do you mind if we make a little pit stop?” I asked.
“Okay with me,” Tria replied with a shrug.
I told Damon where I wanted to go, and he eyed me in the mirror for a minute before Tria told him to just drive. It didn’t take long to reach my destination, and I told Tria she could just wait in the car.
“Are you telling me I have to stay,” she asked, “or are you giving me an option?”
I thought about it for a second before I pulled the little photograph of Krazy Katie’s mom out of my jacket pocket. I had flattened it out and put it in a little wooden frame, and it had ended up looking pretty nice.
“I was going to put it…you know…on her grave.” The whole idea suddenly sounded stupid when I said it. “I mean, I don’t know what good it will do at our place, you know?”
“I know,” Tria said quietly. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You go. I’ll wait here.”
The ground was muddy with the melted snow from last weekend, and it was getting caked on my shoes. I hoped I’d be able to get them cleaned off on a curb or something before getting back in the car, or Michael was going to kill me.
“Hey,” I said as I stared down at the simple stone that read Katie Took on it. “I…um…”
I cleared my throat.
“I guess I’m talking to myself here,” I said. “I just wanted you to know we had the baby, and we named her Katie. She’s Baby Katie, though—not Krazy Katie. I don’t think she’s crazy anyway.”
Chuckling a little, I crouched down in front of the stone.
“I’m crazy about her,” I admitted. “She’s just…fucking amazing. I don’t know how else to describe her. Tria is awesome with her, too, though she had a tough time getting her out. She ended up having to have a C-section. It’s not what she wanted, but…well…it’s what we had to do, ya know?”
I sniffed a couple times. The cold wind was making my nose run. I glanced over my shoulder at the car and saw Tria staring out the window at me.
“Well, I have to get Tria to dinner,” I said. “It’s the first time we’ve been out since Baby Katie was born. I just wanted to stop by and give you something.”
I placed the framed picture at the top of the gravestone.
“I found it when I was cleaning out your place and thought you might like it. Thanks for grabbing the bookshelf and my boots. It kinda sucked when I thought those were gone.”
I stood back up and looked down at the picture of Krazy Katie’s mother.
“Anyway, I’ll see you later, I guess.” I felt like a total fool and looked around to make sure there weren’t any other fools out there looking at me. I didn’t see anyone else standing in the cold, so I backed away a couple of steps before turning to go back to the car.
“Well?” Tria said after I had cleaned off my shoes and climbed back into the warmth of the Rolls.
“Well what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Tria said. “How did it go?”
“Okay, I guess. I put the picture there, so mission accomplished.”
Damon started off down the street, and I felt Tria’s fingers wrap around mine. When I looked down, she gave them a little squeeze with her warm fingers.
“You’re a good guy, Liam,” she said softly. “Did you know that?”
Shrugging, I gave her a half smile.
“You made me that way,” I told her.
“No,” she contradicted, “you were already like that.”
“Nah.”
“Yes, you were,” she said.
She leaned over close and placed her palm against the side of my face. I turned and quickly kissed the edge of her hand.
“From the very first time we met,” she said, “you were my hero.”
*****
Sunday dinner.
Baby Katie was almost two months old, but we finally made it to one of Michael’s family dinners. It had gone well—much better than I had expected. Though I wouldn’t say we were all on the friendliest of terms, I was reconnecting with Mom and at least being civil to Dad.
Still, sitting down with everyone around the table at dinner was bizarre. Not that anything horrible happened, but it was awkward and uncomfortable. Amanda said almost nothing though she and Tria were getting along for the most part. Amanda seemed to have accepted that I was back in the family, and Tria was around to stay.
She loved Baby Katie, of course. Everyone did. She even tried to get up and tend to her when Baby Katie started crying right about the time dessert was being served.
“I got her,” I said quickly. I needed the excuse to take a break from the group.
I gathered her up, grabbed her purple blanket off the back of the pumpkin seat in the hallway, and went to the den to see if I could get her to nap. There were thick, dark red curtains in there, and they did a nice job of blocking out the afternoon light. Once I pulled them closed, I settled down in an overstuffed chair with Baby Katie on top of me.
She settled down almost immediately.
I nuzzled the top of her head and sniffed the soft, downy hair around her crown as I pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. I touched the top of her head, being careful over the soft spot there, and down across her cheek as I sniffed again. She smelled fantastic.
I didn’t know what it was about her, but she always smelled great. Well, except when her diaper needed to be changed, but even that wasn’t nearly as bad as I had always been led to believe. Supposedly it was going to get worse when she started eating other foods, but changing diapers wasn’t the big deal everyone made it out to be.
I said that to my mom, and she just smiled and shook her head.
As much as Baby Katie liked the boob, I didn’t see the real food happening for a while. Tria went through so much cracked and achy nipple pain in the beginning, but now it was completely effortless for both of them. Baby Katie would latch on and go to town, and Tria would hardly notice except that she had to flip her shirt up to do it.
Baby Katie yawned a big, toothless yawn, and then rested her head against the center of my chest. Next to Tria’s tits, it was her favorite place to be. She blinked her big, brown eyes a few times before closing completely.
With one arm wrapped underneath her butt, and the other one around her back, I settled against the back of the chair and closed my eyes as well. It was good to get some rest, even though I knew it wasn’t going to last very long. Baby Katie was comfortable, warm, and content on my chest, and I was thrilled to have her there.
She was going to grow out of being a baby long before I was going to grow tired of her being one.
I dozed for a while, waking only when Baby Katie began to squirm a little. I sat up, wrapped the blanket around her a little tighter, and rocked her a little in my arms until she settled back down. It never took very long.
During my previous session with Erin, she said I had come a long way from the first time I walked into her office. I had only shrugged at her, but I knew she was right. No one was going to refer to me as perfect, but I had made some progress in certain areas.
I hadn’t hit the mullet-dude at work who kept commenting on my heritage—not even once.
I wanted to, no doubt, but I hadn’t done it. That was the main thing. Erin said it was okay for me to think about it as long as I never took those kinds of thoughts and turned them into actions. I was okay with that.
She was actually starting to hint that maybe I didn’t need to see her every week anymore, which made me wonder how long it was going to be until I didn’t need to see her at all. I didn’t mind going. I had even gotten to the point where I sometimes liked talking to her, but as soon as Tria went back to sc
hool, someone else was going to have to watch Baby Katie. Mom and Chelsea had volunteered, of course, but they had their own jobs and lives and shit. They wouldn’t always be able to drop everything.
I thought more and more about what I needed to do with my life…my career.
Was I going to just keep making rings? Did I want to be in a pissant shop with mullet-boy on second shift, or did I want to be more than that?
I wasn’t sure.
There was no doubt that I thought a lot about what Baby Katie needed and what she might want in the future. I knew I didn’t want her to have to struggle to go to school like Tria had. I knew I didn’t want her living in a piece of shit apartment with a shit landlord and guns going off in the night. I remembered how scared Tria had been in the apartment alone, and the thought pissed me off.
There was no way—no way would I ever allow my daughter to be in that position.
My grip on Baby Katie tightened at the thought, and I sniffed her head again. I tried not to think about how Tria’s father had died long before his daughter was thinking about school, and wondered what he might have done differently if he had known.
“All of a sudden, everything that you thought was important takes a back seat, huh?”
My father walked into the den and tilted his head to get a better look at Baby Katie.
“She does look like you,” he said.
“She looks like Tria,” I corrected, then felt like an ass for being snippy. “At least, I think so.”
“I can see you both in there.”
I shrugged but looked closely at her face, trying to see how much her cheekbones looked like mine. Her chin was definitely Tria’s, as was her nose. I held her up a bit more as I leaned over to kiss the top of her head.
It was almost reflexive.
“They really do change everything,” Dad said. He settled down in the chair across from me and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I mean, you know they are going to change your life, but it’s really so much more than that. Your perspective on things changes, too.”
“She’s everything,” I said simply. “She’s Tria, but she’s me, too. I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t have to,” Dad murmured. “I know exactly what you mean.”
A small smile crossed his face.
“You used to sleep on me like that, you know.”
“I did?”
“All the time. It was the only way you would go to sleep unless your mother was singing to you.”
I didn’t think of myself as much of a singer, but I wondered if Baby Katie would like to hear someone sing songs for her. Then I thought my voice might be bad enough that she’d end up in therapy for it later, and I started wondering about what other ways I might screw her up.
I swallowed past a lump in my throat and furrowed my brow as I looked at her.
“It’s a gamble,” Dad said softly. “Doing what you think is best but not knowing how it’s going to turn out in the future. You always want to do the right thing, but you’re human—you screw it up.”
I looked at him, and he looked back down to the floor.
“Sometimes you want what you think is best for them so badly, you don’t realize that what you are doing isn’t what they need,” he continued. “You want to do the right thing, but you don’t. Not because you don’t want to, but because you try too hard.”
Baby Katie’s lower lip started jumping around like she was nursing in her sleep. I wondered if there was anything I wouldn’t do for her and decided there was not.
“I didn’t trust you,” he said. “I didn’t trust you to know what you were saying or what you were doing. I could only think about how much harder it was going to be on you if you had to try to be a father when you weren’t even out of high school yet. I would have said or done anything just to protect you from that, but instead…instead I just fucked it all up.”
“Don’t swear in front of the baby,” I said quietly.
Douglass smiled.
“Sorry,” he said. “I had a really foul mouth before you were born. Julianne would scold me constantly when you were a baby. I told her you couldn’t understand what I was saying, but she was right—it took so long to get me out of the habit of swearing, you were practically talking then. I guess I’ll have to learn that lesson again.”
“You and me both,” I muttered.
“Maybe…” He hesitated and then took in a long breath before speaking again. “Maybe we can practice together?”
Tensing a little, I managed to hold Baby Katie tighter against my chest at the same time. There was definitely a part of me—a small, still angry, teenaged part of me—that wanted to tell him to fuck off. I wanted to tell him that there was no way in hell he got to share in this new life—not after what he had done.
But what if I make mistakes, too?
What if, in trying to do everything that was right for Baby Katie, I fucked up as well? What if I said something that made her mad, and she didn’t want to speak to me anymore, or if she ran to her room and locked the door? What if she refused to have anything to do with me?
Again, my grip tightened.
“Do you think we can, Liam?” Dad asked again. “Do you think we can do this—be a father and a grandfather for Baby Katie—do you think we can do that together?”
I glanced at my father again. Instead of the man who set tragic events in motion, I tried to see the man who made sure we always had dinner together as a family. I tried to see the man who helped me with my math homework, kite flying, and taught me how to kayak.
My eyes searched for the man who had been my father…
…and he was there.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Maybe we can do that.”
*****
“Waaaaah!”
“Ugh,” Tria moaned as she shoved her head underneath her pillow.
“I got her,” I whispered. I rolled out of bed, picked up my fussy daughter, and tossed her up onto my shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”
With Baby Katie in my arms, I snuck quietly out of the bedroom and shut the door behind me. It wasn’t really my turn—I had to get up and go to work in a couple of hours—but Tria had been so tired last night, I thought I should take the extra shift.
Besides, I really didn’t mind at all. Maybe it would get me a few brownie points with the wife. Brownie points meant on Friday night, when Baby Katie was asleep, Daddy Liam could put Mommy Tria’s ankles up over his shoulders and fuck her until she screamed.
Okay, so that was a little vulgar, but at least I didn’t say it out loud.
I knew I was far, far from perfect. I also knew that in the long run, it didn’t matter. Tria wasn’t looking for perfection from me. She just wanted me to be the best husband and father I was capable of being, and that’s exactly what I intended to do. I would be there for her and for Baby Katie no matter what happened. I would support them both—physically, mentally, financially, and emotionally. I would do whatever I had to do in order to give them the best life I could offer.
I didn’t need to fight.
I didn’t need to be rich, and I didn’t have to be poor.
I only had to be me without the shackles and the bars I had created for myself with memories of the past. I didn’t have to hide behind the bars of a cage any longer.
I traced along the edge of my baby daughter’s face.
“I love you,” I whispered to her. “You and your mama, both.”
Baby Katie’s eyes opened, and she seemed to be trying to focus on me. I leaned forward so she could get a better look and took her tiny hand in mine so I could touch it to my face.
“Hey there, little girl,” I said. “You need to go to sleep for a little while, okay?”
I touched her chin and then the side of her mouth. Her tiny little lips started moving reflexively, and she turned toward the touch. Before I knew it, her mouth had latched on to the end of my finger, and she sucked quickly. After just a few seconds, she realized she wasn’t ge
tting what she wanted.
For the briefest of moments, her face scrunched up and she looked ready to scream, but then her face evened out. She sighed, sucked twice more at the tip of my finger, and then closed her eyes.
I was never one to go soft, but surely this little girl could melt any cage I placed around myself.
Epilogue—Embrace the Destiny
I focused.
The cold metal of the bur in my hand made my fingers tingle. My other hand tensed the vise and then loosened again—afraid I might have applied too much pressure. I tilted my head up at the ceiling with my eyes closed, and blew out a long, slow breath.
Maybe I just needed to spend more time with my family.
Between making rings in one of the high-end jewelry shops on the north side of town with stones that approached the cost of three months of my mortgage, going to business school, and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do before officially taking over a portion of Teague Silver, I was exhausted. At the same time, Tria graded economics tests for Hoffman College exams.
I just wanted to hang out with my four-year-old.
A few months ago, she had been with me when I had a session at the gym with one of Graham’s guys. Though I had repeatedly turned down his UFC offers, he was now paying me to fight with his up-and-coming recruits. That was giving me a lot more of a challenge in the ring, and Al got a lot fewer busted lips. When Katie had first seen me fight, she was immediately intrigued and had been “sparring” with me ever since.
I glanced over to the clock on the wall, which told me I had to be out within the next ten minutes to be home by six for dinner.
Tradition.
Cue Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack.
There were many things I wanted to instill in my child, and eating dinner as a family was one of them.
With the stone set, I placed the ring to the side, cleaned off my work area, and headed home to my girls. I had to smile a little when I opened the door to my car—the first car I ever bought for myself. It wasn’t extravagant, just a mid-sized sedan with a car seat strapped into the middle of the backseat, but it was mine. My commute was short, and as soon as I walked in the door, they were there.