After You (Because of You 2)

“You’re silly, Daddy,” she tells him, jumping on him and wrapping her arms around his neck. “You can put me to bed tomorrow when Nikki goes home.”

Her words remind me I’m leaving tomorrow, and my mood droops accordingly. It would have been a hassle trying to pull off a Monday while also watching Cassidy by myself, but I almost wish Derek had beat me at Jenga so I’d have a little more playtime.

Oh well, I’m glad his back is feeling better.

I take Cassidy to the bathroom to start her bedtime routine to the tunes of Taylor Swift. Cassidy treats me like her personal ladies maid, making me brush and braid her hair, then deciding she doesn’t like that braid and we should try a different one.

By the time we get to her bedroom to pick out a story, her hair is down like it was when we first entered the bathroom and she’s wearing a sleeping mask on her head like sunglasses.

I grab the picture book she picked out, glancing through it before starting it. “You know what we could try?” I ask her.

“What?” she asks, tucking the corner of her blanket around her unicorn so she doesn’t get cold.

“Would you like me to read you a book without a lot of pictures? Like a short chapter book where I would read you the story, and you could imagine what things look like in your head?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, cocking her head.

Setting aside the picture book, I pull out my phone and we look up some short chapter books and leveled reader books. We end up filling my digital cart with quite a few selections. I know Derek and I discussed taking her to a brick and mortar bookstore, but there’s no guarantee these will be in stock, and I have them just right here, a click away…

I go ahead and buy them. We can always buy different books at the other bookstore. Glancing at Cassidy, I ask, “Do you know your address? I’ll just have them shipped here.”

“Nope,” she announces cheerfully.

“Cool. We should probably teach you that

before you start school.”

“We should get more books about unicorns,” she tells me.

“Yeah, probably. I’ll have to look into this a little more and see if I can find you some good ones. I know a lot about books, but as it happens, not a lot about middle grade books. I’ll have to expand my horizons a bit.”

“How come you know so much about books? Because you read a lot?”

“Well, that, but also because publishing books is what I do for a living.”

“What does that mean?” she asks, petting her blanket.

“It means I help take the book from the author’s imagination to the person buying the book. I have a team of authors who write the books, then they send them to me and my team edits the book and makes a pretty cover for it, then we help spread the word that the book will be coming out, and finally, we put it up for sale so people can buy the book and read it.”

“Wow, that sounds cool.”

I smile and nod my head. “I think it’s pretty cool.”

“Why don’t you sell any unicorn books?” she asks me.

“That is a very good question. My books are for adults, not kids, and usually adults don’t read books about unicorns.”

Frowning at the disappointing reading habits of adults, she tells me, “Well, when I’m an adult, I’m always gonna read books about unicorns.”

“If you still want one when you’re an adult, I’ll write you one. How’s that?”

“What do you mean, you’ll write it? I thought the authors wrote the books.”

On impulse, I grab my phone again and open my pictures to show her the cover for Dreamcatcher. “See this one?”

Nodding her head, she peers at my phone and tells me, “She’s really pretty.”

“She is. And she’s brave, and funny, and adventurous, too. That’s the heroine of a book I wrote myself. Usually I publish books other people write, but once in a while I put my author hat on and write my own stories.”