Page 52 of Remember Me
“My daddy!”
As she adds in sapphire blue eyes, a pensive smile, some unruly black hair, and dotted specks of stubble, my eyes stay on her picture.
“Wow! That’s so good!” I really mean that; she’s inherited her father’s artistic talent. “It looks just like him.”
She smiles proudly as she starts outlining a body, complete with brawny, tattooed arms that look a little like Popeye’s. Adding a T-shirt and jeans, she starts to color the latter in with the denim blue crayon.
“My daddy is very handsome.”
My heart flutters at her words. “He is.”Oh, is he!
“Do you like him?”
I love him!“I do.”
A Cheshire cat grin lifts her sweet lips. Her dark eyes twinkle. “My daddy likes you a lot.”
My breath catches. “How do you know that?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because I can tell. He’s always happy when he’s around you.”
Taking advantage of Maddie’s chattiness, the investigative journalist in me asks, “Isn’t he happy around Kayla?”
At the mention of Kayla’s name, Maddie makes a face. “Never! She’s always so mean and bossy!” Before I can probe further, she changes the subject.
“What are you going to make, Scarlet?”
Looking down at my blank sheet of paper, I contemplate her question. While I can paint a picture with words, my artistic talent is limited. Forcing myself to shove Kayla and Finn to the back of my mind, it suddenly comes to me. The one thing I can draw well. I search the box for a silver-gray crayon. Slipping it out, I begin to, like Maddie, outline a head. Except it’s not human.
Watching me, Maddie’s eyes flash with recognition.
“Are you making a horsey?”
“Sort of.”
I continue to work on my picture... adding its mane and tail before lightly shading the body, leaving most of it white. Picking out more crayons, I make the flowy mane and tail a pretty shade of pink. Maddie continues to watch as I add a cone jutting out of the creature’s head. I color the spiral in, making bold stripes with assorted bright colors. I’m getting creative!
Maddie giggles. “Horses don’t have rainbow cones!”
“Sweetie, this is a special horse. A unicorn.”
“A unicorn?”
“Yes, it’s mythical.”
“What does mythical mean?”
A tough question. My inquisitive daughter is worse than me. Twisting my lips, I ponder a definition that’ll make sense in her almost five going on twenty-five-year-old brain. My mind works overtime. And then badda bing! “It means that it’s a little bit make-believe though some people think it may have existed.”
She accepts my definition, but the questions aren’t over.
“Why does it have a horn?”
“The horn is magical.”