Page 7 of Justice

I needed it to be all this was.

By the time we pulled through the gate, I’d already made up my mind about Storie’s punishment. She already knew it too, and neither one of us said a word about it the whole ride. The house was quiet when we walked in. Dream wasn’t home yet, still sitting in her little classroom across town waiting on the last bell, and I was almost glad for it. She didn’t need to see her sister like this, and Storie didn’t need an audience for what came next.

She’d turned fifteen a month before. A milestone birthday, the sweet-sixteen warm-up, the one every girl her age was already planning a production around. Storie got none of it. No party. No stack of gift bags. No lil friends screaming through my house so she could floss her new Goyard, or whatever bag the latest raptress had the girls fiendin’ for that month. What she got was a quiet family dinner at Mastro’s. Me, her, Dream, Rita and my siblings. Because I’ll be damned if I reward a child for cruelty. You want the party, you act like you deserve the party. That’s how we were raised, and that’s how I was raising them.

Storie ate her steak that night without a word, her jaw tight, those flat eyes moving around the table doing math I couldn’t see. She was furious. She sat in the silence, cold and still, filing it away in whatever ledger she kept behind those pretty eyes. She’d get over it. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe.

“Go on upstairs,” I told her at the door. “You’re on punishment. No phone, no iPad. And you’re gonna write that teacher an apology, and you’re gonna mean it.”

She didn’t argue. That should have scared me worse than any tantrum. She just looked at me, something moving behind her face, and then she turned and climbed the stairs without a sound.

Dream was a completely different child. Dream was the light. It was later in the evening. Dream had been dropped off. I ordered dinner from an Italian spot they both loved. But I sent Storie back to her room as soon as she was done.

After bath time, I found my baby girl in her room in her unicorn pajamas, hair tucked away in her bonnet, bouncing on the bed with all the joy her big sister didn’t have a drop of. She was only six years old and she looked at the world with such pure wonder. I never wanted that to change for her.

“Daddy, Daddy.” She grabbed my hand the second I sat on the edge of her bed. “My birthday’s coming up!

“I know. You remind me every day.” I laughed.

“Am I getting a pony?” She’d asked me the same thing every night for two weeks, eyes big and shining and dead serious. “You said maybe. Maybe means yes sometimes. Is it a yes maybe or a no maybe?”

I laughed, and it loosened the tension of the day. “It’s a we-gonna-see maybe. Now lay down before you bounce off this bed and hit your head.”

She flopped back onto her pillow grinning up at me. I pulled her comforter up under her chin and sat there a minute longer than I needed to, just looking at her. Both my girls raised under the same roof. Same house, same rules, same love poured into them by the same tired hands. One of them looked at me like I hung the moon. The other looked at me like she was still deciding what I was worth.

I bent down and kissed Dream’s forehead. “Goodnight, baby girl.”

“Night, Daddy. Yes maybe.”

“Go to sleep, Dream.”

I stood between their doors for a minute. Everything in the house was quiet, but it didn’t feel settled.

My phone buzzed before I made it back downstairs. It was Bryce.

“Talk to me,” I said.

“We got a situation at the casino.” His voice was even, but I heard the edge under it. “Nothing I want to say over the phone. I need you to slide through. Tonight.”

“Give me an hour,” I said, and hung up.

Then I did what I always did when the family needed me and I had two girls under my roof and no wife to leave them with. I called Kira.

She picked up on the first ring. She always picked up on the first ring for me.

”Hey, you.” She sounded excited, like she’d been sitting by the phone waiting on it to be me. “Everything okay?”

“I need a favor. Something came up with the business, I gotta ride out for a few hours. Can you sit with the girls?”

“Of course. Anything you need, Justice. You know that.” I could hear the hope in her voice. “I can be there in twenty.”

“’Preciate you. Dream’s already down. Storie’s on punishment, so she should stay in her room.”

“I got them. Go handle your business.” Another pause. “Take your time. However late.”

I told her thank you and ended the call, and I didn’t dwell on how ready that woman always was to come running when I whistled. Monica’s best friend, standing in the gaps my dead wife left behind. I knew what it was. I knew what she wanted it to be. Tonight I wasn’t thinking about either one.

I grabbed my keys off the counter and went to go handle the family’s business. I left my daughters in that house. And I believed they were safe with Kira.