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1
WYATT
“Doyou think I’ll get to see a dead body?”
I stared at my seven-year-old daughter, Penny, unsure about how to navigate this particularly morbid topic. I adjusted the sleeves on the white button-up I’d pulled on. “Get to or have to?”
Penny picked at the hem of her blue dress as she sat with the rest of the skirt rumpled beneath her. She didn’t make eye contact, only shrugged.
I slipped a tie around my neck and worked to get the knot right. “It’s a funeral, so there will be a memorial before we go to the cemetery. You won’t have to go up there if you don’t want to, but people will come to pay their respects to Mr. Bowlegs.”
An unladylike snort came from her little body as her face scrunched up. “Bowlegs? That’s his name?”
“Just a nickname.”
“What’s his real name?”
I paused and laughed a bit to myself. I had no fucking clue.
“I’m not sure. I only ever knew him as Mr. Bowlegs. Usually just Bowlegs for short.”
Penny’s lips twisted. “Why did people call him that?”
Her hearty giggle was infectious, and I tried to embrace the lightness of her mood. Maybe it would ease the dread pooling in my stomach. “Well, I guess because he was bowlegged.”
Penny turned on the bed so she was lying on her back, her head dangling upside down off the edge. “Does everyone in your hometown have a nickname?”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. Ridiculous nicknames were only one of the utterly asinine aspects of Outtatowner, Michigan. Even the town name itself—Outtatowner.
What a joke.
I pulled the knot loose from my crooked tie and tried again. Penny waited for me to answer. Stubborn, that girl. She could outwait a monk if she put her mind to it.
“Not everyone,” I conceded. “But a lot of people.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Just something that started a long time ago. I think it’s a small-town thing.”
“Why?”
I quickly realized we were on the brink of playing thewhygame, and I’d walked right into it.
Not today, Daughter.
“I don’t know. The town’s just weird, okay?”
“You said it’s not nice to call people weird.”
It was annoying as fuck when your child threw your parenting back in your face. I looked over my reflection one last time and turned toward her. “You’re right. They’re just a little different. You ready to go, Pickle?”
She righted herself with a smile and bounced on the edge of the bed. “Is that why you call me Pickle?”
I stepped toward my precocious, pain-in-the-ass spawn. I tapped my knuckle on the end of her little upturned nose. “I call you Pickle because sometimes you’re sweet and sometimes you’re sour.”
Penny pretended to chomp at my hand.
“My point exactly.” I pulled her from the bed. “Let’s go, kiddo. We have a drive ahead of us, and I don’t want to be late.”
