Chapter 2: Chapter 2

“Let me get you a drink,” Preston said.

“And the syrup!” Abby reminded him brightly, her earlier near-tantrum already forgotten.

Preston tousled her hair. “Coming right up, m’lady.”

She giggled as she licked the butter off her finger.

Back in the kitchen, Preston got the syrup out of the microwave and a small box of apple juice out of the fridge. Both went on the table in front of Abby’s plate. As she set about getting herself ready to eat, he pulled the comb from his back pocket and tackled the tangles in her hair.

She had a system to her breakfast, one Preston had to admit he didn’t understand. If anything disrupted her before she was finished setting things up just right, she’d get upset, sometimes so much so that she wouldn’t be able to eat. First the napkin had to be unfolded onto her lap. Next, the butter had to be spread across the entire top of the pancake—if the pat was too thin or the pancake too large, and the butter didn’t cover the whole thing, she wouldn’t eat it. Adding more butter didn’t fix the problem.

Then she cut the pancakes into quarters with the side of the fork. In half once, turn the plate, then in half again. Next came the syrup, which was poured on until it covered the entire plate up to the thin blue line that ran around the inside of the base. No more, no less. Every drop would be sopped up with the pancakes until nothing remained by the time she finished eating.

Only after she ate everything on her plate would Abby pull off the plastic straw on the side of her apple juice box, unwrap it, and poke it into the box to drink. All the food was consumed first, then every sip of her drink. The two chewable vitamins beside her plate were the last thing she ate. She went through the same routine every morning, without fail. Not even Saturday cartoons could distract her or disrupt her rhythm.

Now she concentrated on her pancakes as Preston combed her hair. For once her single-minded focus was a good thing, because she was too busy to pay him any attention. He worked through the knots as gently as he could, careful not to tug too hard, and by the time she got to her drink, he’d reached the scraggly ends of her long hair. They were splitting a little; time for a trim. Which would involve an argument of epic proportions, he was sure. Abby was currently in a princess phase where she had to have long hair like all the Disney princesses, and she didn’t believe him when he tried to explain that trimming an inch off the bottom would help the rest grow longer.

Maybe it’d look better up. At least then it wouldn’t be hanging in everything or get tangled up so badly throughout the day. But when he gathered her hair up to pull it back into a braid, she shook it free. “No, I want it loose,” she told him.

“Honey, it looks so nice pulled back,” he argued. “It’ll be out of your face—”

“I want to wear it loose,” she said again. Then, to clarify, she added, “Long and flowing, like a fairy.”

So today it was fairies, no princesses. It’ll be a tangled mess again by the time you get to school,Preston thought. Out loud, he only asked, “Don’t you want it off your neck?”

Running her hand under her hair to pull it over one shoulder, Abby shook her head. “I want to look like a fairy for my pictures.”

Preston had been chasing after her hair with the comb; now he stopped, surprised. Was she talking about school pictures? “Wait, is that today?”

“I gave you the paper to sign last week, remember?” She leaned back and looked up at him, bumping her head against the back of her chair. “You said I could buy some of them for my friends. Remember?”

To be honest, he didn’t. She told him so many things in the course of a day that most of them he tuned out or forgot, but he’d never admit that to her, not in a million years. And he could hear her mood beginning to shift again, so he nodded quickly. “No, you can. Of course you can. Go on upstairs now and finish getting dressed, okay? Wear something pretty—”

“Daddy, I’m alwayspretty,” Abby said. “You told me that.”

With a laugh, Preston hugged her in the chair. “And you are, sweetie. You are.”

* * * *

Preston was cleaning up the morning dishes and glancing at the clock above the oven—another five minutes and he’d holler up at Abby to get a move on or she’d be late for school—when his phone dinged with an incoming email. It wasn’t a text message; the sound he had set for those was different. There was only one person who would send him a message so early in the morning.

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