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“Look, Daddy, look!”
Lucy pointed across the sea lion enclosure to a keeper who was entertaining a little sea lion cub. It was furry with big eyes and didn’t have the same coordination as all the adult sea lions. But it was way too cute for its own good.
“It’s a baby.” Lucy grinned at me, showing off the gap in her teeth, which I still hadn’t gotten used to. There was chocolate on her chin.
“I know it’s a baby. He’s pretty cute, huh?”
“I think it’s a she, Daddy.”
“How can you tell?”
She shrugged. “How can you tell it’s a boy?”
I laughed. “Fair point. Well, he or she is very cute.”
We watched the sea lions a little longer. The sea lion cub sidled up to a bigger sea lion and started nudging and nuzzling at them. “That’s like us, huh?”
Lucy shook her head. “That’s a mommy, not a daddy.”
I twisted my lips to the side. She never meant to hit me with daggers, but she could do it pretty easily with an offhanded comment like that. “You’re probably right, though.” In nature, most fathers weren’t really around like the mothers were. I hated that everywhere we turned, the world showed us examples that a daughter and a father alone together wasn’t the norm. “Do you think sea lions have nannies?”
Lucy laughed. “No.”
“Really? Don’t you think a mommy sea lion needs a little help every once in a while?”
She finished up the last bits of her ice cream cone, licking her fingers clean of chocolate ice cream. “Sea lions don’t need to have jobs, so they don’t need nannies.”
Ouch. Again.“Good point. You’re so smart.”
The sea lion feeding finished up and all the lions basked in their full bellies. We watched a little while longer before Lucy wanted to move on to the penguins. We walked hand in hand through the zoo. From time to time, I felt eyes on me. This was a normal occurrence. I was a recognizable person. I tried my best when I was out with Lucy to be discreet. I would wear a hat, sunglasses, just a little something that would make someone unsure it was actually me.
I tried to ignore it and focus everything on Lucy. However, it was a constant reminder that my life was not ordinary. I couldn’t walk around and just blend in with the crowd, couldn’t have a typical marriage and family for my child, couldn’t have a normal conversation with my nanny that didn’t end up going somewhere…unusual.
I’d gone to bed with thoughts of Cara in my head. All her comments about my attractiveness and eligibility — not in spite of being a father butbecauseof it. Well, that was a lot to think about.
I squeezed Lucy’s hand as we ambled through the zoo. “So. A week with Cara. What do you think?”
“I like Cara.”
“Yeah? Why do you like her, honey?”
Lucy’s expression was so bright I thought it could chase away the clouds of this gray winter day. “Well, she’s nice. And she’s fun. And she’s very good at playing pretend. And she lets me help with dinner. And…”
The list seemed endless. I soaked up every positive thing Lucy said, happy that my instinct about Cara had been right.
Her list halted. “Doyoulike Cara?”
I half laughed. “Um. Yes. I like her. For all the reasons you like her.”
“But what about the reasonsyoulike her?”
God, Ihadmade a list. I didn’t want to admit it, but I did, at least mentally. Unfortunately, mine started with beautiful eyes, followed by a luscious body, and hair that I wanted to gather in my fist while…don’t go there, old man. But the more I’d come to know Cara, the more those superficial traits fell to lower places on the list. They were replaced with things like her sense of humor and her kindness and her commitment to what she wanted. How much she knew herself.
“I think she’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, Lucy. And that’s pretty special, don’t you think?”
Lucy pulled my gloved hand to her cheek and leaned on it. “Oh, Daddy…”
“What, baby?”
