Page 13 of York

My daughter.

She was a tiny thing in a pink t-shirt, multicolored shorts, pink sandals, and a big, chunky bracelet on her wrist.

Her hair wasn’t as dark as her mother’s or mine, but a light brown, long, and pulled half up with bangs hanging like curtains to the sides of her forehead.

I wish I could say I saw myself in her.

But I’d been a tank of a little kid. Tall, burly, with perpetually bloodied hands and knees from falling when I played too hard.

It was impossible to see anything of me in this tiny, delicate little human. That, somehow, I’d helped create.

But she looked up—not at me, I was sure, but the zoo sign itself—and I saw her eyes. Brown, but not dark like Runa’s. They were a lighter chocolate shade like mine.

I felt a stitch in my chest, sharp enough for me to lift my hand and rub at it.

But then they were just a few feet in front of me. Runa offered me a tight smile. Denali was half-hidden behind her mother’s leg.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” I said, exhaling.

“Denny, this is my friend, York. Do you want to maybe say hi?”

Denali watched me for a second with those big, round eyes, trying to decide if she would or not.

Eventually, though, she reached out a chubby little kid hand for me to shake. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said, not sure how much pressure to put, so I gave just the tiniest of squeezes. “Mommy said you’ll be nice.”

My gaze flicked to Runa, seeing the tension around her eyes. Why would the kid assume I wouldn’t be nice?

“I will be nice to you,” I assured her, hoping kids had a knack for hearing sincerity.

“And to Mommy.” There was a firmness in her voice then, almost like she was trying to set a boundary, like maybe one had been crossed in the past.

Who the hell had been around my kid?

What had she seen them do?

“I’m going to be nice to your mom too,” I told her.

Denali gave me a nod at that and reached up for her mother’s hand. Runa took it and gave her daughter a smile. “Didn’t you want to ask York a very important question?”

My stomach tightened, wondering what the hell that might be.

“What animal do you want to see?” she asked, making some of the tension slip out of my spine. “Mommy wants to see a white tiger.”

“White tigers are cool. What do you want to see?”

“Elephants. And giraffes.”

“Well, let’s go see some then.”

We stepped up toward the ticket booth, and Runa reached to draw the pack off her back, but I was quicker, buying the three tickets, then leading them through the opening.

We were almost immediately greeted by flamingos, which Denali cooed and gushed over—seemingly because they were pink, which used to be her favorite color. But now it was purple. But she liked yellow too. And sparkles. And rainbows.

Any worries I’d had about her being shy flew out the window as I desperately tried to funnel away everything she was saying so I knew her a little better.