“No, Daddy. I like when you read to me,” she said, exasperated. “I want a song. But only if it’s Twinkle Twinkle.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, switching off her lamp and singing to her.
It was the same lullaby I’d sung to her when I was suddenly a father with a screaming newborn in my arms, swaying and so scared I’d drop her. Smoothing back her hair, I couldn’t believe how big she had gotten, how smart she was. I swallowed hard, trying to fight getting sentimental. I kissed her on the head and tucked her in.
“I love you, Sadie,” I said. “Sweet dreams.”
“I love you, too, Daddy. Check on me!”
“I will, and you better be in dreamland,” I told her fondly.
I shut the door and then did up the breakfast dishes from the morning, cleaned up around the kitchen, and put in some laundry. I popped a beer from the fridge and turned on the TV to try and stay awake long enough to put the clothes in the dryer. Sadie was about out of clean socks that matched, so I needed to get the load done before bed, or she’d be at school in mismatched socks tomorrow. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but as a single dad, I tried to be extra careful about stuff like that. Make sure she washed behind her ears, a healthy lunch was packed, and I’d checked her school folder to see if I needed to sign anything. I didn’t want people thinking I didn’t try or that she needed a mother. A mother wasn’t something I thought about in connection with my little girl very often. We had each other and that was enough. She filled up my heart—the kid I hadn’t known I wanted until she was here. Nothing could come between us now.
I looked around my living room and felt a surge of pride. I was glad I’d moved to Rockford Falls to bring up my daughter. Our cabin right at the foot of the mountain ridge was close enough to town for her to go to public school but far enough away that it was quiet, peaceful. I’d gotten a hell of a deal on the place and fixed it up. I mostly bought it for the stand of timber in the back, acres of forest that stretched up into the foothills. But our little two-bedroom was snug and as tidy as I could make it with Sadie leaving about four hundred crayons everywhere.
I was happy with my choices in life. If you’d asked me ten years ago what I wanted, I’d have said I wanted to be a partner in the investment firm where I was a rising star, and I wanted to have a vacation home in Italy. But I’d veered off the fast track when Sadie came along and never regretted it once. There was a steep learning curve to making timber successful, but I’d hired a lumberjack from north Georgia to come out and train me for a few weeks, and I’d been fortunate enough to be able to hire help to take care of Sadie while I got on my feet. Now I had a successful business, a healthy, happy daughter, and time on my hands.
What had begun as a way to keep idle hands busy by whittling a small figure or a dollhouse table and chairs had evolved into making full-size accent tables and bookcases, cutting boards, and inlaid charcuterie boards and serving trays. It was a use for scrap wood that prevented it going to waste and it was satisfying to make something unique out of what was left over.
There was no way I could have predicted that this would be the life I wanted. Living on my own land in a cabin in the mountains with my daughter, working with my hands and loving it, feeling more grounded and happier than I could ever remember. I could have just retired on the money I’d already made; bought the brownstone I’d been living in and hired a nanny. I wouldn’t have had to work another day in my life, but I wanted a different kind of upbringing for my daughter. She needed room to play and fresh air and something more wholesome than the rat race and the social climbers that surrounded me in New York. We both deserved better, and I’d made it happen. I had a standing order for timber, and I milled some of my own at the place outside Overton, plus I chopped firewood to sell in town and made furniture and other custom pieces. I liked to keep my hands busy, and more money seemed to follow.
I leaned back and shut my eyes. It had been a good day, but sometimes, just once in a while, the nighttime was lonely. In an ideal world, I would’ve had someone to talk things over with. Someone to show the gleaming river the teal epoxy made down the center of that table just the way I intended, and someone to laugh over the things Sadie said about being so grown up. And somebody to share the fact that I had a pang of sadness over it, too, the idea that she was no bigger than a football the day I met her and now she was full of opinions and definitely didn’t eat enough vegetables. I sighed.