The Last Thing He Told Me

“So, if you’ve got it handled, why are you sitting here by yourself, in the middle of the night, staring at your daughter’s piggy bank?”

“Thinking of breaking it open,” he said. “In case we need the money.”

“What’s going on, Owen?” I said.

“Do you know what Bailey said to me tonight? When I told her we had to evacuate? She said she wanted to go with Bobby’s family instead. That they’re staying at the Ritz and she wanted to be with him. It turned into a whole, big thing.”

“Where was I?”

“Locking down your workshop.”

I shrugged, trying to be gentle. “She’s growing up.”

“I know, it’s totally normal, I get it, but… the strangest thing happened when I told her no,” he said. “I watched her stomp after me toward the car. And I just kept thinking, she’s going to leave me. Maybe it’s being a single parent all this time, just trying to keep the two of us above water, but I don’t think I ever fully thought about the fact… or maybe I just didn’t let myself.”

“So that’s why you are downstairs, looking at her piggy bank in the middle of the night?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a strange bed,” he said. “Can’t sleep.”

He picked up his bourbon, held it near his lips.

“When she was a little girl, when we first got to Sausalito, she was scared to walk down the docks. I think it was because the day after we moved in, Mrs. Hahn slipped and fell and Bailey saw her almost go down, almost land in the water.”

“That’s terrible!” I say.

“Yeah, well, for those first couple of months, she would make me hold her hand the whole way down the docks. From our front door, all the way to the parking lot. And she’d ask as we went, Daddy, you’re going to keep me safe, right? Daddy, you’re not going to let me fall? It took us like six and a half hours to get from the front door to the car.”

I laughed.

“It drove me crazy. The hundredth time I had to do it, I actually think I went a little crazy.” He paused. “And you know the only thing worse than that? The day she stopped.”

I put my hand on his elbow, held him there. My heart exploding a little at his love for her.

“There is going to come a time when I won’t be able to keep her safe anymore, not from anything,” he said. “I won’t even be able to tell her no anymore.”

“Well, I can relate to that,” I said. “I can’t even tell her no now.”

He looked over at me, bourbon still in hand, and laughed. He really laughed—my joke breaking his sadness, splintering it for him.

He put down his drink and turned toward me. “On a scale of one to ten, how weird is it that I’m sitting here?”

“Without the piggy bank?” I said. “It would be a two, maybe a three…”

“With the piggy bank? Am I breaking six?”

“Afraid so.”

He put the piggy bank on an empty stool, and motioned for the bartender.

“Would you please make my wonderful wife here the drink of her choice?” he said. “And I’ll take a cup of coffee.”

Then he leaned in, put his forehead against mine.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. It’s hard, I get it, but it’s not happening tomorrow, she’s not leaving tomorrow,” I said. “And she loves you so much. She’s never going to leave you completely.”

“I don’t know about that.”