CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Sam isn’t ready to tell his daughter that her mother has passed away, and he can’t very well bring her to the funeral, so she stays in the apartment with me. She isn’t too keen on the idea at first, but once I show her that I can stack a mean set of blocks and don’t mind when she kicks them over, she accepts me as a babysitter.
“What’s your name?” she asks me.
“My name is Emerald, remember?” You’d think after two days of having this conversation, she’d finally have it straight in her head, but no . . . Here we go again.
She shakes her head, making her curls bounce. “I mean your real name.” She watches as I stack another block on top of the others.
“That is my real name.”
“No, that’s a color. I mean your real name.”
I smile at this stubborn little stinker who’s well on her way to stealing my heart. Watching her bond with and tease her dad for the past two days has shown me what a sweet and sassy angel she is. Life is never boring with this kid around.
“That is my real name. My name is Emerald Grace Collins.”
She thinks about that for a few seconds. “Grace isn’t a real name either. It’s what a ballerina has. Ballerinas are graceful.”
“You’re right.” I nod, never realizing before how incorrect my name was. “Ballerinas can be graceful. And they wear tutus.”
She giggles. “That would be funny if your name was Emerald Tutu.”
I can’t help but smile. “Yes, that would be funny.”
“Where did my daddy go?”
I put up a few more blocks before I answer. “He had to go out with some friends for a meeting.”
“Is he jamming?”
I’m trying to look as serious as possible. This kid’s vocabulary is something else. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to an adult. “Yes. I think he’s jamming.”
“Well, where was his guitar? He didn’t have it when he left.”
I shrug, feeling like I’m being interrogated under a hot lamp at the police station. “I don’t know. Maybe he had it out in his car.” I don’t know if Sadie’s aware of her father’s trip to New York, so I’m not going to tell her that this is where at least one of his guitars is.
She shakes her head. “My daddy never leaves his guitar in the car. He says people will steal it. There are lots of stealers here.”
“Maybe your daddy’s friend has it at his house.”
“Why would my daddy’s friend have his guitar?”
“Maybe he borrowed it.” I start using two hands to stack the blocks. I need to get this damn thing built so Sadie can start focusing on knocking it over instead of grilling me about her father. She’s relentless and I’m running out of stories.
“My daddy never lets anybody use his guitar. He says they’ll screw it up.”
“Well, that’s not very nice for someone to screw up his guitar, is it?”
She puts her hands on her hips, tilting her head at me. “It’s not. When you borrow somebody’s stuff, you should be nice with it. And not break it, also.”
“I agree one hundred percent.” I gesture at the tower that’s now almost as tall as she is. “Are you ready to knock this sucker over?”
She folds her arms across her chest and studies it intently. “No. I don’t think so. I think it needs to be taller.”
“You’re ready to cause some mayhem, aren’t you?”
She looks at me, all innocence. “What is mayhem?”
“It means a big, giant mess.”
She smiles and nods, her little blond curls bouncing all over the place. “Yes! I’m going to cause some maydem. But I need this tower to be a lot taller first.”
I salute her. “Yes, ma’am. And taller it shall be. And the word is mayhem, not maydem.”
“Mayhem, mayhem, mayhem,” she mumbles under her breath as she helps me by handing me the next block she wants me to use.
I spend the next couple minutes making sure it’s perfect. Then I stand up and step back. “Are you ready to cause some mayhem now, Miss Sadie?” Little Miss Mayhem is more like it.
She takes a few steps back, adjusts her shoulders, and nods once. “I am ready.”
“Should I do a countdown?” Before she would just rush the towers and blast them apart with her little foot, but it seems like this one needs a little more pomp and circumstance. The thing is taller than she is. I’m actually a little fearful she’s going to hurt herself.
“Yes,” she says. “Count down.”
“Okay . . . ready . . . set . . . ten, nine . . .”
The doorbell rings.
I pause my countdown.
“Just ignore it,” Sadie says. She has all of her focus on those blocks. “Do the countdown.”
I glance toward the door to Sadie’s room and out into the hallway but do as I’m told. “Eight, seven, six . . .”
The bell rings again, several times, and then there’s a pounding on the door. Someone really wants to talk to Sam, but all of his friends are at the funeral. Paranoia and fear trickle into my heart.
“Just ignore it.” She looks up at me, clearly frustrated. “We don’t answer the door.”
“We don’t?”
“No. We never ever answer the door. That’s the rule.”
I’m now officially freaking out. Is that really the rule here? Why? Do they get a lot of annoying salespeople, or should I be worried about who’s on the other side of that door? I’m so happy Sadie has the vertical blinds closed over her window.
“Sadie, why do you have a rule that you don’t answer the door here?” I pick up a block, trying to act casual as I weigh my options: I can continue to hide in Sadie’s bedroom, or I can go to the door and confront whoever is there. Neither sounds like a good idea.
“Because. It’s gonna be those Jedobah Witniks again.” When she shakes her head and rolls her eyes, I can completely see her father in her expression.
It takes me a few seconds to translate Jedobah Witniks into its proper form. I feel marginally better after hearing and understanding her explanation. “Oh. Okay. So if it’s a Jehovah’s Witness, we don’t answer the door, but what if it’s somebody else?”
“Who else would come here? When my daddy jams, everyone goes there.” She walks around the stack of blocks carefully and stands next to me. Then she gestures for me to bend down. I fold in half and put my face close to hers.
She leans in and whispers into my ear, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Maybe it’s the bad people.”
Fear strikes my heart like a lightning bolt. I whisper back, “Bad people?”
She nods and then puts her finger to her lips. She gestures for me to follow her as she goes over to her closet.
“What are we doing?” I ask in a whisper.
“Hiding from the bad people.” She climbs into the closet and crouches down in the corner, pulling a blanket over her bent knees. She motions for me to join her.
My heart breaks right in half. “Sweetie . . . who taught you how to hide from the bad people?”
She looks up at me, her eyes wide, full of both innocence and a healthy dose of fear. “My mommy did.”
I immediately stand up straight. There’s no way in hell I’m going to let this tiny girl be afraid in her own house. This is ridiculous. Sam said that Drake guy isn’t going to come by here, and I believe him. I’m just going to go tell whoever it is to go away.
“You stay here. I’m going to go look through the peephole and see who it is. I’m sure it’s probably just the Jehovah’s Witnesses with some pamphlets.”
She’s still whispering. “Okay. I’ll stay here.” As I start to walk away, she speaks again. “Wait!”
I turn around and she whispers at me, “Don’t open the door.”