I barely manage to put a foot through the front door before a pint-sized angel slams right into my chest.

“Daddy!”

I put my hands out automatically to catch my assailant, and sweep up my favorite girl in my arms. I squeeze her tightly, pulling her up and nuzzling my nose against her velvet hair. She smells clean, of bubble bath and freshly laundered cotton sheets.

“As happy as I am to see you,” I whisper into my daughter’s ear, “I don’t suppose you want to tell me what you’re doing up so late?”

The angel shakes her head against my chest and clutches me tight.

“Poppy!”

A gray-haired woman comes barreling round the corner. Mrs. Kathy – Poppy’s nanny – blanches when she sees my face. Just as quickly, a touch of embarrassment adds color like a drop of blood to a basin of water. She throws her hands up in the air and shakes her head.

“Mr. Wolfe, I’m so sorry. I thought Poppy was asleep. The next thing I know she’s sprinting past me, and –”

“It is fine, Kathy,” I chuckle. It’s been a long day, full of expected – and somewhat less expected – stress.

I know that at her age, Poppy should be getting her beauty sleep, but there’s something irresistible about seeing her in this mood. I know I’m able to spend more time with my daughter than most fathers do – perks of the job – but still, every second I’m away from her makes my heart hurt.

“Here,” Kathy says as she walks toward me, the hem of her 1950s housewife style skirt kisses the ground. “Let me take her, you go –”

I shake my head. “Nonsense. You get on home. It’s late. Do you want me to get Stan to drive you? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

Mrs. Kathy shakes her head so vigorously I start to wonder whether she thinks my innocent suggestion might cause a scandal in her neighborhood. I hide the smile that’s tickling my lips.

“No, I wouldn’t want to impose,” she says. “Besides, Jason’s waiting on me downstairs.”

I nod, composing myself as Kathy gathers her things. I know that the old nanny just told me a white lie, but I let it slide. It’s harmless enough.

Kathy’s husband has been in the hospital six months now. I know because I know everything about my employees. Especially the ones in whom I entrust my daughter’s care.

I know because it’s my job to keep Poppy safe.

I know, because the mysterious charity that started funding Jason Davies’ care isn’t so mysterious to me. Mrs. Kathy would never have come to me asking for help. She’s from a different generation. Yet I provide her husband’s care regardless.

It’s not just charity. I don’t like it when people close to me have weaknesses. Because when they have a weakness, I have a weakness. You can call me paranoid if you want.

But it’s not paranoia when they really are out to get you…

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Kathy,” I smile, stroking Poppy’s hair. She nods formally, but the lines on her face relax for a second as her eyes pass over me and my daughter.

“Yes, Mr. Wolfe,” she says, before the front door clicks closed behind us.

“Now,” I say, as I put my – capital letters – DAD voice on. “Miss Wolfe, what, exactly, am I going to do about you?”

Poppy glances up at me, finally revealing her glittering hazel green eyes. She gauges my reaction for a second, trying to figure out whether I’m truly cross with her or not. This time, as usual, it’s ‘or not’.

It’s hard to stay mad at a girl as precious as my own daughter.

“Read me a bedtime story..?” She ventures.

I shake my head, incapable of concealing the smile that creases my lips. “The brass balls on you!”

“Daddy!” Poppy exclaims. “No swearing.”

I bite my lip and squint at the brown-haired girl in my arms. “Oh, that’s right…” I murmur. “I’m supposed to follow the rules, aren’t I?”

The ends of Poppy’s hair dance as she shakes her head vigorously. She smiles up at me. “Yup.”

“So don’t you think…” I start.

Poppy’s face falls as she realizes that I’ve backed her into a corner.

“…that you should follow the rules as well?”

“Yes, but –,” Poppy starts to protest. She falls short when she realizes it’s useless.

I shake my head. “No ifs, ands, or buts. Tell me, kiddo – why aren’t you in bed? I thought we had a deal?”

Poppy’s face unexpectedly lights up. I wince as I realize that it’s her turn to back me into a corner.

“We do,” she nods, her young, innocent face completely incapable of hiding her glee. “And the deal is that you tuck me into bed, not Mrs. Kathy. This is like,” she squints, drawing her face back, “the second time this week Mrs. Kathy has been here instead of you, daddy! You know she’s not the same! It’s not our deal.”

I walk toward the kitchen, carrying poppy with me. “You got me there, kiddo,” I sigh, ruffling my daughter’s hair. “You’re my daughter, all right. Nothing gets by you, does it?”

Poppy beams as all her hair whips from side to side.

A wave of guilt attacks me. Poppy is right. We do have a deal. By not spending time with my daughter this evening, I just broke it.

This thing between me and Skye – whatever it is – I’ve got to get control over it. I can’t let any woman – no matter how attractive, no matter how alluring – stand in between me and my daughter.

“What’s that, daddy?” Poppy asks after a couple moments of silence.

I blink, clear my head, and look up, refocusing my eyes. “What’s what, kiddo?”

Poppy juts her chin at the kitchen island, at the gray notebook sitting on top – the one Skye gave me.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I lie. “It’s just… a work thing.”

“What kind of work thing,” Poppy continues to ask.

“The kind of work thing I’ll tell you about tomorrow,” I say sternly, uttering my own little white lie. “Because it’s so far past your bedtime I’m wondering if I’m seeing things! Surely you’re just a figment of my imagination, aren’t you?” I wink.

I wink, but in truth I’ve dodged a bullet. I left the journal Skye gave me lying about, just tossed it onto the counter because I wasn’t prepared to deal with what it represented.

Poppy pouts, but gives in. I knew she would. She’s a good girl.

“Will you tuck me in, at least?” She says with pleading eyes. Now, how can I resist her when she asks me like that?

“Sure thing, kiddo,” I say with one last ruffle of her silken hair. “Let’s go.”

“And –”

“No bedtime story,” I growl, eyes sparkling to let her know I’m joking, as I put her down.

Poppy scampers off light-footedly, and I follow in her footsteps. As I tuck her into bed, all I think about is how her mother and I used to do this together, when Poppy was just a baby. For the first time in years, a tear burns at the corner of my eye.

Poppy frowns up at me from the darkness of her bedroom. “Everything okay, daddy?” She asks.

I close my eyes for a second, straighten my expression, and then look down at her. I need to be strong for my daughter, and in front of my daughter. I need to shelter her from all the darkness in this world. That’s a father’s only job, my only reason for living. Especially when Ashley, my one-time wife, no longer is.

“Everything is fine, kiddo.”

“Okay, daddy,” and Poppy smiles. “Hey…you know something?”

“What.”

“I’m going to be ten next week, daddy.”

I adopt a mock-surprised expression. “You, ten? No way.”

“Yes way!” Poppy protests. “I’m growing up and you can’t stop me.” She smiles, but then the expression falters on her face.

“Don’t be silly, kiddo. Of course I remember,” I grin hurriedly, assuming my daughter is disappointed because she thinks I’ve forgotten her big day is coming up. “You think I’d forget a day like that?”

“It’s not that,” Poppy mumbles, turning her face away and hiding it in a pillow.

“Then what is it?” I ask feeling a touch concerned. My daughter’s got a lot of me in her. We don’t show emotion too easily. So this … this is unusual.

“It’s just,” Poppy says into her pillow. “Mom’s not gonna be there, is she?”

A lance of sadness cuts right through me, like a burning arrow aimed straight through my heart. I let out a deep sigh. No matter how hard I try, the one thing I cannot provide for my daughter is her mother.

“Oh, Poppy,” I whisper, sitting down on her low-sunk bed. “I wish I could lie to you. I wish there was something I could say that could bring your momma back. Every single day I wish we were a family. But –”

“But you can’t,” Poppy mumbles in a low, broken voice that radiates her pain. She rolls over in bed, pulling the covers tight around her tiny neck and my heart breaks when I see her tear-stained face. “It’s alright, daddy. Thanks for tucking me in. I’ll go to bed now.”

“Poppy…” I say.

But what the hell am I supposed to say? There aren’t any right words to express how broken I still am over Ashley’s death. And there’s nothing I can do to bring her back.

Nothing.

No matter how much money I make, there’s nothing I can do to make us a family again. I can’t turn back the clock. I wasn’t there to save my wife. That’s a wound I’ll have to bear for the rest of my life.

I lean forward and embrace Poppy’s tiny frame in a bear hug. My voice has abandoned me, my brain has ossified and shattered in my head. This is all I can do to show my baby girl the she’s not alone in this world.

But it’s not enough.

“You wanted a bedtime story, kiddo?” I say. I start talking without knowing where I’m going. The very next word is alien to me, it’s like someone else has taken control of my mouth, my lungs, my brain.

“Daddy, it’s alright,” Poppy whispers. “You don’t need to.”

“But you do,” I say.

And maybe I need it, too.

“Your mom was the bravest girl I’ve ever known,” I say in a voice that’s barely more than a whisper.

Hell, it hurts to speak, but I know I have to. I have to push through the pain, because Poppy’s old enough to know what happened to her mom.

“Even –?”

“Even braver than you,” I say with a half-cough, half-laugh, grateful for the light relief. “Or maybe you’re just about as brave, Pops.”

Poppy just looks up at me from her bundle of sheets. Her eyes are trained on me – dark and sparkling from hot tears that still threaten to leak out. I talk because I need to, because I’m unloading seven years of hurt on a girl who might be strong enough to take it – but definitely needs to know.

Because, Ashley Wolfe was a hero.

And she was the best goddamn woman I’ve ever known.

“We met years ago. Before you were even a twinkle in my eye,” I whisper, ruffling Poppy’s hair. “She was a medic, did you know that?”

Poppy nods, with the look in her eyes that says, daddy, you’ve told me a thousand times. But it’s also a look that tells me she wants to hear it all over again.

“Yeah, a rifle-bearing, pack-humping, chest-thumping Marine Corps combat medic. Well, Navy actually. Heck, you don’t need to know the details, just that your mom was the kind of girl who’d follow you into a burning building with bullets flying and not even blink once.”

I pause as a wave of memory threatens to sink me. Poppy lays her hand on my arm, as if she knows. A pang of guilt overcomes me, and I wonder for the thousandth time whether I should be sharing something this heavy with a girl so young.

But I press on, because, that’s what Ashley would’ve done. Because, that’s what Ashley would have wanted me to do.

“She shipped out when you were just a baby,” I say. “What a family, eh. Your daddy, jumping out of helicopters into the sea and swimming onto beaches; your mom, running around the desert, dodging bullets and helping save Marines’ lives.”

“She did?”

I nod, and my chest clenches with the memory of receiving the folded flag that summed up my wife’s life. As if it could. She was so much more than just a scrap of cloth, no matter how sacred.

“She did. I’ve got a shoebox stuffed full of letters from the men and women whose lives she saved.”

“Can I read them?” Poppy whispers hesitantly.

My lips form to tell my daughter no – that they are full of coarse language, words I don’t ever want her saying, no matter how old she gets.

But then I relent. Because how can I hide the last piece of my dead wife’s soul from the daughter she left behind? I can’t.

“Of course, baby,” I say, “we can do that together when it’s time. You know, your mom would have been so proud of you. I know she would.”

There’s a pause, and then Poppy asks me the question I’ve been dreading since she was a baby.

“Daddy,” she murmurs in a voice that’s barely audible. “How did she die? How did mom die?”

I close my eyes and I’m taken straight back to the desert – to the smell of aviation fuel in the air, the buzz of helicopters, of trash burning in barrels and of unrelenting Middle Eastern heat. I’m taken back to the day she died, the day I heard that Ashley’s Humvee hit an IED on the way back to base.

To the day I talked my way onto a helicopter to be by her side, only to get to the base hospital to find no one there.

“She died a hero,” I say with my eyes squeezed shut – telling my daughter the truth.

And then I hear myself, hear what I’m saying – just a useless platitude. People have told me the same thing for a decade, that Ashley died a hero. They mean well, every one.

Yes, it’s true. And yet it isn’t.

Ashley Wolfe didn’t die a hero. She died a mother, and a wife – a woman who had so much more life to live, and so much more love to give. She died without ever hearing her daughter speak her first words. She died without seeing Poppy walk, or go to school for the first time.

A tear rolls down my cheek.

“She died loving you,” I say, hugging my daughter tight. “The people who killed her, they weren’t so bad, just misguided. Your mom told me off every time I said they were bad. They were just ordinary people in a horrible place. But believe me, Poppy – your mom died loving you. Don’t ever wonder about or be ashamed of that.”

I wait there until Poppy’s sad, broken breathing becomes smooth, then peaceful with sleep. Until the end, every time it hits that hitch in her chest where her breath catches on her grief, I feel the same lance of pain burn through me.

Then I pad out of her room.

This time it’s my turn for hot tears to burn their way down my cheeks. I’m a strong man. I’m a proud man. But I’m not too proud to admit that what just happened in my daughter’s bedroom cut me right to the bone.

It cut deeper than that, even.

I walk back to the kitchen and pour a tumbler of whiskey – my body acting on autopilot. I knock it back, and then pour another, shaky hands spilling droplets to either side. The alcohol burns its way down my throat. It hurts, but the pain is just a fraction of The Grief I’ve carried for the last decade.

It’s The Grief that’s rearing its ugly head once more.

Then I see it…

…The Journal.

Damn, I’m even thinking about it in capital letters.

The gray notebook sits there on my counter, fucking daring me to open it. The alcohol simmers in my veins, and I know it’s affecting my emotions, but I can’t help myself. I’m burning up, bubbling over. There’s one question I can’t keep in the dark, one question I can’t dodge.

What the hell am I doing with Skye?

I have to raise a daughter. Maybe I should swear off women for good. Or at least until Poppy turns eighteen…

I stride toward the journal, blood boiling. Somehow it’s a symbol of every pain that has been inflicted on me all these years – of losing Ashley, of raising Poppy alone.

Of everything.

I pick it up. I throw it across the room. It hits the glass walls of my penthouse suite. It slides down. It lands in a crumpled puddle on the floor.

Read that.