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She studies me, hesitates. “Come with me.”
I shake my head, look at the empty bottle on the ground wishing it was full.
“I need you,” she says.
I watch her face, try to read her. “You don’t need me.”
“Please.”
I look at her standing there in that threadbare shirt, ruined panties clutched in her hand, her feet bare. I’m sure they’re cut up. I did that. Damaged her too. It’s what I do.
I leave the bottle where it is and get up.
She’s still afraid of me, though, because she takes one step back then stops herself. When I reach her, I look her over, wet and muddy and waiting here for me when she could have gone. When I told her to go.
And I find I can’t meet her eyes, so I pick her up, hold her cold and shivering against my chest and carry her back to the house. I leave a muddy trail to my bedroom and into the bathroom where I set her on the edge of the tub and look at her feet, the mud caked on her legs, the ruined shirt, the panties she’s still holding.
“Take off your shirt,” I tell her and shift my attention to the large tub. I run a bath, checking the water temperature as she takes off the shirt. When I look at her, she’s standing naked, one arm across her breasts, the other to cover the V between her legs. I don’t comment. “Get in the tub.”
I feel exactly like a jerk. The selfish jerk she accused me of being. I watch her climb into the tub and sit in the middle of it. She hugs her knees as the water fills up.
Without a word, I use the handheld to wash the mud off her, drain the dirty water and fill the tub until it’s almost to her shoulders. I switch off the water.
She only steals glances at me, but I can’t look away from her. I pull my shirt off and sit at the edge of the tub at her back. I don’t want her to see my face. Not right now. With the handheld I rinse her hair as she hugs her knees to her chest.
“You’re right,” I tell her. I lift her hair off her back and set it over her shoulder. I look at the tattoo. It looks good. It looks like she’s mine. And I wonder about karma. About why she’s been placed in my hands.
She turns her head to meet my eyes and I force myself to meet hers.
“Kimberly would have been a good mother to her,” I say, a sort of confession. “A better mother than I am a father. I know that. I’ve always known that.”
“I didn’t mean what I said. That she’d be better off—”
I put up a hand to stop her. “She would.” I’ve never said this out loud. Not in five years. Even though I’ve known.
She turns so she’s facing me. “Fix it,” she says.
“It’s too late.”
“It’s not. Just fix it.”
It’s too late. Isn’t it? “How?”
“Just be here for her. That’s all she wants. Just be her dad who is here for her.”
“I can’t—”
“You can. It’s a choice, Jericho. Like you said to me once. Everything is a choice. You just have to choose her.”
I lock my jaw. She’s right. I get up, grab the bottles of shampoo and conditioner, something new I guess Catherine put in here, and return to the tub. “Turn around,” I tell her. She looks at the bottle and turns and we sit in silence as I shampoo her hair, the only sound that of water dripping now and again into the full tub, that of me rinsing her hair, washing it again, massaging conditioner into her scalp careful of where I pulled her along by that mass not an hour ago.
And I think about what I’m going to do to her. Think about her fate.
She doesn’t deserve it either. Doesn’t deserve me or Carlton Bishop or any of the shit that’s happened to her. The shit she doesn’t know the half of. But here I am. And here she is. And when I’m finished bathing her, I lift her out of the tub and dry her and carry her back into the bedroom.
“Get on your knees,” I tell her as I set her on the bed. “Your back to me.”
She watches me suspiciously as I open the nightstand drawer and take out a tube of salve. When she sees what I intend to do she sits on her heels with her back to me and tugs her hair over one shoulder to expose her back.
