Her grin brightens even more. She doesn’t even try to look apologetic.
“He’s not allowed in your bedroom in the morning because he puts his stinky butt on your face to wake you up,” she declares proudly.
I nod and pick her up, her arms curling around my neck.
“Let’s try to remember that tomorrow, okay?” I say, kissing her temple as I start walking.
“Okay, daddysaurus,” she whispers right into my ear. “Can I have pancakes now?”
“Did you brush your teeth?”
“Yes,” she lies immediately.
I narrow my eyes and keep walking toward the bathroom. “Then you won’t mind brushing them again, will you?”
She pouts but, to my surprise, gives me a half-hearted “okay.”
Huh.
Usually we’d have a whole back-and-forth about it, but I’m not about to poke the baby dinosaur. I’ll take the win.
Gary joins us in the bathroom, stretching out on his favorite thing in the universe — the small blue mat in front of the shower.
There are three more cats somewhere in the house, a shaggy dog probably decorating the living room couch with hair, and — God help me — a cow. Fang got Daisy a friend a few years ago, but Daisy wasn’t feeling very friendly, and he had to give up the new girl. Adora didn’t miss the chance to adopt Mookie, and that’s how we ended up changing homes.
Luckily, the farmhouse next to Fang’s was up for sale. Even more luckily, there are five whole miles separating us. I wish there were more.
By the time my little T-Rex and I are done in the bathroom, it’s already past seven-thirty.
“Go play downstairs. I’ll wake up your brother and then make you pancakes,” I say, clipping the last dinosaur into her braid.
Never thought I’d ever fucking learn how to braid hair, much less decorate it, but here I am.
I won’t complain, though. I got it easy compared to Bones. That fucker has one boy and four girls — two pairs of twins, mind you — and all of them, including the boy, wanted long hair. And each one likes a different style. He had to learn fast. It was fun watching him flail for a while.
“Tate’s already up,” Riley says, smiling at herself in the mirror.
I freeze.
“He’s playing in your office.”
Shit. I’m going to find toy soldiers and Barbie heads stuffed into every crook and cranny again.
I leave Riley in the living room trying to have a conversation about pterodactyls with Greg — the family dog, name chosen by Adora, of course — and head toward my office.
The door is wide open, and Tate, my four-year-old, is right in the middle of the room, playing pirates on the floor.
But he isn’t looking at the toy ship in his hand. He’s looking at the display case on the shelf in front of him. My old violin, the one Adora broke over a decade ago, is inside it. Still damaged.
Worth about sixty grand when it was in good condition, it’s the only thing of actual value I inherited from my mother. But the truth is that this violin is worth more to me broken than whole. Because when it crashed against that wall and shattered, Adora’s silence toward me shattered too.
She’s the one who put it in the display case and, ever since Tate first laid eyes on it, he’s been fascinated by it.
“Make magic, Daddy!” Tate says excitedly, pointing his toy at the violin.
That’s what he calls music — magic. He knows the violin in my office isn’t for playing, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to convince me to use it.
“Later, Blackbeard," I say, picking him up and walking out of the office. “First, breakfast. I’ll play for you later.”
