“Having fun?” Danner asked with a bright smile as he held the door to his winter ride, a huge, new white Dodge RAM 1500 truck that I basically had to climb up to get into.
“Um, yeah,” I said, with a happy roll of my eyes. “This is the best day ever.”
I said it without thinking about it, but as Danner rounded the car to get into the driver’s seat, the betrayal of my words hit me like a bullet through the heart.
It wasn’t the best day ever. It couldn’t be. Not with my dad in prison, not when I wouldn’t be able to see him.
He’d write me a letter. I knew it would be at the Danner’s when I got home from my adventures, a thick envelope filled with thin paper weighted with heavy, precious words. He wrote King and me a lot. A few times a week at least, and they never got old even though I knew there wasn’t that much to do in prison. His letters were always filled with questions about our lives, with stories he shared of the family before he’d been locked, of the wild things we would do when he got out.
They didn’t help the missing of him, that phantom ache I felt in my heart as if it was missing a vital piece, but they made me smile.
I didn’t smile then, looking out the window as Danner got in the car, started it up so that “Snake Song” blew like smoke through the space between us and Main Street began to slide by outside my window. I touched my fingers to the cool glass and wondered when my Dad would see something new again.
“What’s up, Rosie?” Danner asked, adjusting his navy Entrance PD toque over his head.
It was snowing out, just a light dusting, but it was nearly Christmas and the streets were covered in it, just as Danner was, snowflakes melting on the tips of his long lashes, on his broad shoulders under his heavy coat. I wanted to capture one of the icy flakes on his cheek and bring it to my mouth.
I was eleven, but little thoughts like that had begun to stud my thoughts, making the topography of my mind rough and dangerous, riddled with landmines of desire I didn’t fully understand.
I pulled my own hat, a smaller one with skull and crossbones all over, down over my cold ears and looked back out the window.
“Nothing.”
He snorted. “Rosie, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you got a personality that poisons or lightens an atmosphere dependin’ on your mood. Right now, the air in here tastes like arsenic, so I’m thinking there’s something wrong over on your side of the car.”
I sighed, rolling my head against the back seat as if he was annoying me when really, I loved that he’d noticed.
“Fine, I’m missing my dad, okay? I know I’m eleven and too old to get all snot-nosed about something like that, but it’s true so whatever, okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed instantly.
“Yeah, like you don’t need to make a big deal of it or anything,” I told him.
“Right.”
“I mean it, Danner,” I said, because I only called him Lion when I was feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable.
“I hear ya, Harleigh Rose.”
“Good,” I said, looking out the front window as we turned off Main and the ocean opened up in front of us, gunmetal grey in the winter light.
“Good,” he echoed.
I slanted him a look to see if he was making fun, but his lips were their normal firm, full and flat.
We were silent after that, our Lion & Rosie playlist the only sound in the truck as we drove. I leaned an elbow into the passenger side window sill and thought about birthdays with my dad before he went to prison. When I was four, he’d taken King and me to Whistler and taught me how to ski on the bunny slope. When I was five, the year he got me my first pair of combat boots, he’d invited the entire club over for a party in my honour with a banner that said “Happy Birthday, Princess” and everything.
I vaguely heard Danner making a call in the background of my memories, but I didn’t want to listen or talk to him. It felt wrong to be with him and enjoy it when I couldn’t share the day with Dad.
“Rosie,” Danner called my name after a while and I adjusted so I could look over at him. “I’ve got two surprises for you today, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little angry with myself for not thinking of this one first, but it is what it is. We’re here now, and then we’ll go get your present after, okay?”
I frowned at him. “I don’t need even more fun!”