“Daddy, can we have a pet snake?”
Jim choked on his coffee, his head turning to look at his daughter - his curly haired, pink-cheeked little girl, dressed in a soft yellow t-shirt and overalls with flowers on them, her blue eyes staring innocently at him. Everything about her said “girl,” and now, what?
“I’m sorry, what?” he said, sure he’d misheard her.
Cecelia had gone back to diligently tearing up pieces of stale bread to toss to the ducks in the pond at the park near their house.
“A snake,” she repeated calmly, as she tossed some bread and watched a pair of mallards fight for it. “I want a snake, please.”
Apparently he hadn’t misheard.
“Why,” he asked cautiously, “do you want a snake?”
She tossed more bread. “Dougie Webber has one,” she told him. “He brought it to school for show and tell, and he wouldn’t let me touch it. So I want one so I can tell him he can’t play with mine.”
Interesting tactic, but Jim had to wonder where Cece had come up with this eye for an eye solution. He was pretty sure it wasn’t something he and Pam had taught her. He slid off he bench and kneeled in the grass next to his daughter.
“So you just want a snake to be mean to Dougie Webber?” he asked, holding out his hand. “Can Daddy have some bread for the ducks, please?”
She handed him some torn-up pieces. “Yes,” she replied, not about the bread, but about the snake. “He’s mean to me.”
Jim sighed. “Come here, Cee,” he said, arranging himself cross-legged on the ground and pulling her on to his lap. “You’re going to be too big for this soon.”
She shrugged up at him.
“Dougie shouldn’t be mean to you,” he told her, “but being mean back to him doesn’t make it better.”
She seemed to contemplate this. “So no snake?”
Jim shook his head. “No baby, no snake.”
Cece nodded. “Turtle?”
He tugged lightly on her ponytail. “Since when do you want slimy pets?” he queried.
“That’s what she said,” Cecelia replied, blinking.
Oh god.
“That’s what who said,” Jim asked slowly, praying that it was simply a matter of him having asked a question she’d already answered.
Cece shrugged. “I dunno,” she told him flippantly. “Uncle Michael said it.”
“And…you’re never going to the office with Momma and Daddy ever again,” he informed her.
He leaned down to give her an Eskimo kiss, brushing her tiny nose with the tip of his not-so-tiny once, and wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Turtle, Daddy?”
He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Maybe when you’re older, Cee, okay?”
She seemed to accept this. “Okay,” she said, nodding. “I love you.”
He loved that she now told he and Pam she loved them without prompting. There was almost nothing better.
“I love you, sweet girl.”
She delivered a perfunctory kiss to his chin and climbed off his lap, scrambling close to the ducks.
“Daddy?” she called back.
“Hmmm?”
“If I get a turtle,” she said, “I want to name her Dougie Webber Stinks.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
In which there's a bit of a breakdown in communication.
