“You’re not my dad,” said Ava. The way her jaw was set reminded me so much of Sarah’s stubbornness. It was uncanny.

“Like it or not, I am,” I said.

Probably a bad response. Don’t get combative, Jack.

It was hard not to let Ava’s temper get to me. The girl was intent on acting out whenever she could, on punishing me for abandoning her.

The worst thing was? I knew I deserved it. But given that, how would we ever move forwards as a family?

Ava stuck out her tongue. “If you were really my dad, you’d let me eat Froot Loops for breakfast.”

This time, I laughed at how mundane her demands could be. “How about this, Ava? If you eat Froot Loops for breakfast, you’ll go to school without fighting me. Would that work?”

I silently prayed that the bribe would suffice. It was already past 8, and I knew that Ava’s first grade teacher had warned me that moving from her foster family to my place had disrupted things.

I didn’t need to be reminded of what a bad father I was; I already had my own mind to do that for me. So I was rapt, watching Ava to see what she’d say to me.

“Ok.”

It was as simple as exchanging promises for sugary cereal crap. Bartering 101, apparently.

Ugh.

I was glad that Sarah couldn’t see me with our daughter right then. The shame and guilt from abandoning her was bad enough, but the residual turmoil between us was almost unbearable.

Yet, I deserved it. Ava could probably trot that old chestnut out until she was getting her driver’s licence and I’d cave.

Ava shovelled the cereal into her mouth at an alarming rate, and then dressed herself and went to school without fuss. The walk back home from the schoolyard was just long enough for me to lose myself in thought.

How long would Ava resent me?

Was there anything I could do that would reassure her that I loved her?

Had I even done the right thing, coming back? Maybe she’d have been happier staying at the foster family’s place indefinitely.

I shook my head, trying to reject the notion, but it kept coming back to me. I’d spent the better part of three years clawing my way out of the deepest depression I’d ever known. Why bother, if you’d done irreparable damage to your family?

With these dark thoughts swimming in my head, I unlocked the front door and paused in the entryway. From the window at the side of the living room, bright sunshine was streaming into the house. I was far too sad for light, so I went to close the blinds.

At the window, we had a perfect view to the house next door. There was a window in Charlotte’s house that allowed me to see her standing, dressed in a huge sweater and dishevelled sweat pants, at a canvas. I wondered what she was painting.

Something with murky blues, gestures and shapes I couldn’t make out.

Another pang of guilt hit me as I thought about how I’d behaved around my neighbor. She’d meant well, I knew that. Ava had been the one who slipped out of the house and made a beeline to a stranger’s place rather than be around her own father.

It wasn’t my fault that Ava’s kindergarten teacher, someone she recognized and probably expected more stability from than her own family, lived next door.

However, it was up to me to behave better than I had last night. No matter how damaged I felt, I needed to do better to be the dad that Ava needed. The father she deserved, not the one she’d had for the past few years. Step one was being present.

Check.

If only I knew what step two involved.

Without the band, I wasn’t sure how to occupy my time. Gabe was sleeping on the floor in my bedroom, cozy as if I’d never left to drop Ava off at school. I noodled on the bass in the living room to keep from waking him, but my eyes kept drifting to the window.

Why wasn’t Charlotte at the school right now? It was the middle of the day. I watched her painting, unable to keep my gaze from her back.

She was beautiful, no doubt about that. I admired the thick waves of her hair even from this distance, the repetition soothing to the eye, the brown rich and inviting.

It had been a long time since I’d met someone new and had them over to my house. Even though Charlotte’s visit had been under duress, thanks to Ava’s plans, it had been nicer than I thought it would be. She was good with Ava.

Maybe I could use an ally next door, someone who Ava trusted and liked already. Someone who could bridge the icy gap between myself and my daughter, a neutral third party.

There was something warm in my belly at the thought.

Was it hope?

I smiled at myself and shook my head. Hope didn’t matter anymore. I had duty, which would have to be good enough.

* * *

The day passed by, minutes ticking away while I shuffled around the house trying to tidy, or write songs, or do something that made the time feel less oppressive. The chime on my phone when it was time to go pick up Ava was a relief. This time, I took Gabe on his leash and we both walked to go collect her.

“How was school today?” I asked Ava, who had smiled at Gabe and glanced at me when she saw us.

“Good,” she said.

Rookie mistake, asking a question that could have a one-word answer.

Gotta work on my techniques.

“What did you learn in science today?”

“Stuff,” said Ava.

It was like my six-year-old was prematurely sixteen. Taciturn wouldn’t bother me if I could just be sure she would eventually thaw. I had no confidence that such a development would ever occur.

I might have lost the only chance I ever had at a good relationship with my daughter when I buried myself in grief at the Beech Lake cabin. When I relinquished the idea of a reunion to the inevitability that I wasn’t up to confront social services.

The immense selfishness of my previous few years continued to stagger me.

How could I have done that to her?

Ava was probably never going to forgive me, and I had to learn to be ok with that.

“What about English?” I asked, naively hoping a different subject might crack her stoicism.

“It was boring,” she said. “Spelling.”

Ok, we were up to four words per answer. That was progress.

We walked slowly, pausing to collect stones or pick at leaves that were starting to fall to the ground, yellow and beautiful. Ava had an endless curiosity for the world around her. Seeing that at least that wonder was still the same warmed my heart.

“Art was good,” she said.

An offering. Comments without prompting. I resisted the urge to grab her hands and grin at her, asking a thousand follow-up questions. The back of her head was so close I could kiss her, but I didn’t do that either.

Just thanked the universe silently for the forward movement.

“What did you like about it?” I asked.

I was ready for her not to respond, for the parting of the clouds to have been brief and illusory. Ava surprised me, though, and kept talking.

“We were painting,” she said. “So I tried to do clouds like Miss Travers, the big puffy white ones and little thin ones too. It didn’t work.”

My breath was tensely held, unconsciously waiting for something to shatter the moment. I felt like a gift had just been given to me in beautiful wrapping paper, and I was afraid to unwrap it, lest there be something far less wonderful inside.

“It looked too mean at the end. But the paint was fun,” she concluded. And she looked back at me, eyes vivid and curious, as if she were checking that I was listening. She couldn’t have known how raptly fascinated I was.

My daughter was creative. I knew she had talents; I couldn’t wait to see them. And maybe, just maybe, she’d show me. Someday.

That flicker of hope resurfaced, a tiny warmth inside me reminding me that there could be a future.

“I’m sure you’ll get better with practice,” I said. “That’s fun, too.”

Ava nodded.

The exhale of my breath startled her when I sighed, enough to make her blink at me accusingly.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said. But I couldn’t conceal the smile on my face. “I’m just happy you had a good day.”

“Only the art class was good,” she added, frowning.

“Still, that’s something,” I said.

Again, Ava considered my statement and eventually nodded.

We were getting somewhere.

Not far, but movement was good.

* * *

As I made dinner, Ava worked quietly on coloring—using her box of crayons to thoughtfully fill in the spaces of a book with shades so vivid the picture took on a surreal quality. I glanced over at the bright green skin of a farmer holding a cyan pig and smiled. It was good to know that creativity ran in the family.

I stirred the macaroni haphazardly, realizing that I’d spent so long dreading that Ava would remind me of Sarah, worrying about how to handle my grief in the face of those moments, that I hadn’t anticipated the times when Ava would seem like me. My daughter, a reflection of Sargent history and of the ways I explored the world.

I hadn’t been an artist, that was true. But art, music, passion, they were things that meant everything to me, right next to family. Though I didn’t have the family I’d wanted for all those years, I did have a sweet daughter lying on the carpet, exercising her crayon fingers with such vigor that it took me out of myself. That was something.

It was more than something; it was inheritance.

Watching Ava color reminded me of my childhood, the days spent quietly strumming my dad’s acoustic guitar when I thought he wasn’t looking. Of tapping rhythms on the hollow wood body, staring into the hole in the middle wondering how it made its sounds. Of discovering the joys of creating a song from nothing, honing it, practicing it.

Ava may have looked so much like Sarah it hurt, but she apparently had my love of creation. It made my heart sing so brightly that I almost didn’t notice that the macaroni was boiling over. Water hissed on the stove when it splashed over the edges of the pot and Ava looked up.

“What are you doing?”

“Making macaroni. Mac and cheese,” I said.

“Then why does it smell like burning?”

Lately, I’d been feeling as if everything I did turned out wrong. This would have been added to the list, had it not come at the exact moment it did. Rather than rage at myself, circling around in my brain remembering everything I’d ever done wrong, the acrid burning smell of the few macaroni bits that had jumped overboard made me smile.

Ava’s comments also made me smile. I turned to her and grinned even wider.

“You don’t like mac and cheese that tastes burnt?” The tone of my voice should have been an obvious joke, but Ava and I were still so shaky together, discovering who the other was. She stared at me blankly.

Her “No?” was tinged with utter disdain. It sounded like the tone you’d expect from a teenager. Was six really that old? Where was my baby?

You left her to grow up on her own and now you’re scared of the outcome.

Sometimes I really hated my brain. It was always there to remind me of the worst of myself, right on cue.

“Don’t worry,” I said, my voice quiet now. “That was just a few rogue pieces of pasta that jumped ship. The rest will be tasty.”

“Ok, then,” said Ava. She returned to her coloring. After I drained the pasta and made the base for the sauce, I invited her over to watch the cheese melt into it. She used to love the swirling, gooey mess of the cheese at this step.

“No thanks,” Ava said. Her face hadn’t even turned from the page she was now dotting with purple polka dots.

It felt silly, how hurt I was. She’d been a toddler when I last lived with her, wouldn’t remember the vast majority of experiences we’d had together. I’d known that. It was one of the things that haunted me when I couldn’t sleep at night. But to be reminded, so viscerally, that Ava was years past me, away from me, crushed what optimism I’d found when taking her home from school.

When the food was ready, I filled two bowls with the pasta, sat at the table, and started to eat. I’d let Ava come to me and help herself when she wanted to. If she wanted to. I knew I was succumbing to more depression, but I couldn’t find a way out of it. All I could feel was despair, loneliness, a humming baseline of pain and rage at the universe that had taken both Sarah and Ava from me, and then returned Ava completely different.

Most importantly, I was furious with myself for the way I’d let my life get away from me. Here I was, in my early thirties, technically unemployed, estranged from my daughter and completely wracked by the death of my wife. Hope seemed yet again to elude me.

In its place, at least there was cheese. Lots and lots of melted cheese.

Though I doubt Ava was motivated by empathy for my sadness, she did follow the wafting scent of mac and cheese to the table within a few minutes. She sat next to me, spooning mouthful after mouthful of the stuff into her eager, growing body.

“This is really good,” she said. The surprise in her voice hurt, but I forced myself to focus on the compliment. Pain was dime a dozen for me; might as well appreciate that it came dosed with happiness too.

“Thanks, Ava,” I said. I took a deep breath, hesitating for a second, and then launched into a story I wasn’t sure she wanted to hear. “When you were little, before… I used to make this for you and you loved to watch me cook it. The melting cheese fascinated you; it was like you wanted me to add more and more so you could keep watching it. I mean, obviously that makes the food pretty rich but the cheesier the better right?”

I had to stop when my eyes started stinging with tears. My throat was threatening to close up from emotion and I had to keep it together so that Ava didn’t feel like I was a mess.

Even if I was.

“Did I?”

The question was small. Innocent. But the fact she was asking anything at all, responding to the way I rambled, soothed my ragged emotions.

“Yeah,” I said.

Maybe we were getting somewhere farther than I realized.

I didn’t want to burst whatever fragile bubble I was creating, so I ate in silence for the rest of the meal. Ava finished the entire bowl of macaroni, something I hadn’t thought she could do, and smiled down at the empty dish for a second. It made my heart wobble, as if it could escape from my chest entirely.

“Jack?” she said.

She hadn’t called me Daddy since I picked her up from social services. I knew that her foster parents probably had asked her to call them by their names, but it still stung to see that I was on a similar level, not somehow ‘more’ because of being biologically related to Ava.

“Ava?” I answered.

“Do you think I could take painting lessons?” she said.

Money was no object, that was certain. The Avowed had made me enough wealth to live comfortably, in fact, excessively, for the rest of my life if I wanted to. Still, I paused.

There was some jealous part of me that didn’t want Ava to spend time with a stranger, learning and growing appreciative of their talents, when she still kept me at a distance.

That part of me was absolute bullshit.

“Sure, honey,” I said, the term of endearment awkward in my mouth. That awkwardness reinforced my desire to practice, though, to the point where it didn’t sound so weird. I had to.

“Great!” she said, visibly brightening. And without warning, she trotted out of the house, head held up with such eagerness that I didn’t exclaim with surprise that she was running out.

Ava made a beeline to the house next door, Miss Travers’ place, and rang the doorbell over and over and over again before I ran up and stopped her.

“Ava, once is enough,” I said. The frustration in my voice made her eyes go bigger, mouth closed in a fine, tight line. I couldn’t tell if that was contempt, fear, or something else entirely.

I didn’t have long enough to decipher Ava’s mood anyway, because Charlotte Travers answered the door with a burst, clearly alarmed by the barrage of doorbell rings.

“Oh,” she said, her cheeks reddening slightly. “Hello Ava. Jack.”

She nodded at me, hair held up in a bun loosely enough that a few strands broke free as she moved.

“Miss Travers,” I said, unsure of where to begin.

“Charlotte,” she responded. “Please.” There was paint both fresh and old splattered on Charlotte’s shirt, an oversized peach tee. The effect was surprisingly flattering. It made Charlotte look like she was dressed in art.

“Jack said I could take painting lessons!” Ava interrupted.

Charlotte blinked, her eyelashes remarkably thick and long. “Aha…”

Since when did I notice neighbors’ eyelashes?

“And Ava was, uh, excited…hoping that maybe you would teach those lessons,” I said, finishing the implication of Ava’s pronouncement.

Charlotte’s eyes widened and she faltered, looking from Ava’s expectant face to mine and back again.