Top Dog

“Do you want me to call you something else?” I asked.

“Grandma calls me princess.”

“Well, that’s Grandma’s nickname for you. That’s why I don’t call you princess.”

“Daddy called me princess.”

I gripped my steering wheel hard as tears brewed behind my eyes.

“That he did,” I said.

“Does Grandma call me princess because Daddy isn’t here to do it anymore?” Lily asked.

“I think so, yes.”

“Do you not call me princess because it hurts to say it because Daddy’s gone?”

My daughter always had a way of reminding me that she had her father’s intuitive spirit. She was remarkable for her age.

“A little bit,” I said. “But I’m fine.”

“I miss Daddy.”

“I miss him, too, honeybee.”

“You wanna know what I miss the most?” Lily asked.

“What’s that?”

“I miss his coffee.”

“What?” I asked.

“The way his coffee smelled. You drink gross coffee. It’s all black and nasty. But Daddy’s coffee always smelled like flowers.”

“Flowers,” I said.

“Mhm. Like the flowers we have in our backyard.”

“I don’t think Daddy’s coffee smelled like flowers. I think his hair smelled like flowers.”

“No, Mommy. It was his coffee. I know. I tasted it.”

“You drank Daddy’s coffee?” I asked.

“It was only one time! It was still gross, but it tasted like it smelled.”

“You’re a little booger, you know that?”

She giggled and stuck her tongue out at me playfully. I laughed and shook my head as we turned onto our street. I kept my eyes on the road as my daughter started singing to herself. She was starting kindergarten in a week, and I couldn’t believe the time had flown by so quickly. She was growing so big, and her language skills exceeded most her peers. At one point I was afraid she would fall behind.

When her father died, she stopped talking altogether for several months, and I was worried she would regress in all the progress we’d made with her. Instead, when she did start talking again, she was using words I hadn’t even known she knew. It was like conversing with a teenager sometimes.

“Mommy, look!”

I shook my head as I pulled into the driveway, my eyes scanning the scene in front of me.

“Nikki!” Lily said.