Evenings Charlotte sorted through recipes in a stack her mother had left for her, and he tried his best to work out exactly why Misty so taunted him from the beyond.
Patch stood at the stone counter and scratched his head.
Charlotte wore an apron and scratched her head.
“So you bake it, even though it’s ice cream. And it doesn’t melt. And you make a sponge. And then you light the thing on fire,” he said.
“Yep. And it tastes like Alaska.”
Near two hours later they sat at the small oak table, a spoon each, and ate from the charred wreckage.
“Turns out Alaska tastes like crap,” Charlotte said.
“Maybe we should store these recipes in the basement. In a locked box.”
“I didn’t even know there was a basement,” she said.
He led her down and she stood before the walls, each covered in sketches and paintings and newspaper cuttings, letters and maps and postcards and photographs. He said nothing at first, just let her find her way as she walked around and took in the height of her father’s madness.
For an hour she thumbed through the past two decades of his life, said little before telling him she was tired and that she wanted to sleep.
He gave her a while then headed up, and in her bedroom she lay curled away from him, only the Day-Glo of the starred ceiling keeping the darkness from total.
“You want to come back down? We watch movies every Saturday night,” he said.
“The girl,” Charlotte said, without turning.
He settled onto the floor beside her. Above he noticed Polaris a little out, throwing off The Bear.
“You remind me of her,” he said.
“I know that you saved my mother’s life. That’s a noble thing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“Because I didn’t choose it. If I had weighed options and made the decision to go…to help her out, then maybe people could say it was brave. But if you just do something, if it’s some kind of innate reaction, can we be sure of its intent?”
“She said I should be proud of you.”
“I think I have to earn that, Charlotte.”
“I wanted you. Before. I wanted a father.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you won’t stick around. You can build a house and take me in. But it’s…it’s not real. You don’t have a life, you don’t have friends or—”
“What about Saint?” he said.
“The woman that shot you.”
“Sammy?”
“Mom said he’s your pimp.” She turned over. “You know what else Mom said?”
“Tell me.”
“She said your heart only has room for so much love, because once it gets damaged it shrinks.”
He thought of Misty, of the things he had done.
“Is that what you worry about, that I won’t have room to love you?”
She did not answer.
And when she slept he leaned in close and wanted so much to kiss her soft cheek. “I’ll always be here for you. I swear it.”