4. On His Own

4

ON HIS OWN

“ D addy is going to miss you,” Jamie said to Penelope the day before Thanksgiving ten days later.

“Bye, Daddy,” Penelope said.

“I’m not leaving yet.” He laughed and gave her a kiss while she was playing with her doll. “I hate to leave you,” he said. “But Daddy has to work.”

There was a time he’d played on Thanksgiving, but now he’d be calling the first game in Detroit. Only a two-hour flight there and back, but the time to get to airports and wait around added up. He was leaving first thing in the morning at the crack of dawn before Penelope would even be up. He’d get home when she was in bed too.

Who would have thought this parenting thing would be so hard?

And he was doing it on his own.

“I’ll see you on TV,” Penelope said. He understood her words. She spoke well, but he knew that some who weren’t around her as much didn’t catch it all.

“You will,” he said. “Are you going to tell Janelle it’s me again?”

Janelle was the nanny he’d hired when Penelope was born and he brought her home from the hospital. He’d be lost without the woman he paid through the nose to care for his daughter.

Just as he’d told Laken last week when he’d met with her. You need the best in your supporting rolls and you couldn’t be cheap about it.

Aside from the small guesthouse he’d had on his property that Janelle lived in, she stayed in the main house when he was out of town.

Days he didn’t work, Janelle had off. He figured he called on her more on the off hours. She’d be over when he got Penelope in bed.

He liked the nighttime routine with his daughter, but if Janelle was here, Penelope would rather go with the older woman.

“I will,” Penelope said. “Dolly will see you too.”

He looked at the doll Penelope was holding with a tiny pair of glasses on. He’d had the doll custom made for his daughter.

“She will,” he said. “Are you hungry? Do you want a snack before your bath and bed?”

“Cookies?” Penelope asked.

She was batting her big blue eyes at him. His eyes. The color and shade of them. The blonde hair, that was Mercedes’s. Not much he could do about it.

It was only a hair color, but his daughter did resemble him a lot. He’d seen pictures of himself as a child that his mother had sent. He was grateful she’d done that when they weren’t happy with his decisions in life.

His lifestyle and the results.

They did love their granddaughter even if they didn’t see her much.

He was sure the pictures had more to do with his parents not being positive he was the father of Mercedes’s baby even though those DNA tests said otherwise.

“No cookies,” he said. He knew his daughter got them when he wasn’t around, but he tried to keep her diet as healthy as he could. “How about animal crackers?”

“Yes, please,” Penelope said. “For Dolly too?”

He shut one eye. “Dolly can have some too.”

He picked Penelope up and carried her to the kitchen under his arm like a football and pretended to run past defenders. His daughter thought this was a hilarious game they had.

When he got to the end of the house and stepped foot into the kitchen, Penelope shouted, “Touchdown!”

He laughed, tossed her in the air, planted a kiss on her nose and then set her on her feet.

She made two fists and shook her butt in the form of a touchdown dance that just warmed his heart more than anything else could.

“We make a great team,” he said.

“Crackers, please,” she said, moving to her seat by the table.

When she started to climb up herself, he stopped her. She was too independent for her own good at times.

He got her in the seat on the bench and buckled her into it, then filled two tiny bowls with animal crackers. One for her and one for Dolly.

Once his daughter was eating her snack, he got an apple and a jar of peanut butter, cut his slices and spread the peanut butter on them and joined his daughter at the little breakfast nook they shared their meals at.

The minute Penelope saw his snack, she was reaching for it. She always did. Which was why he made good snacking decisions in front of her.

He took the knife he’d brought with him and cut a few small pieces off and set them in front of her.

“What was your favorite part of today?” he asked.

He always wanted her to think of the positive in the day rather than focus on the bad.

Easier said than done, but he figured if she got into the habit of thinking about what she liked in life rather than what didn’t go her way, it’d be a good habit to learn early on.

“Tea party,” she said.

“Would my lady like some tea with her crackers?” he asked, standing up. “Or milk?”

“Milk,” Penelope said.

The guys on the field would be busting a nut laughing at him if they saw him sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out under a tiny wooden table while his daughter and some dolls were in chairs and dresses and sipping imaginary tea out of plastic cups and eating fake cookies.

He could barely hold the cup in his hands, but he did it for Penelope.

Then once the tea party was done, they went in the yard and ran around kicking the ball. He wanted his daughter to learn everything in life and make decisions that way.

Sitting or running, it was her choice. She picked the pink ball to kick over the blue one, but she also chose to kick the ball rather than being pushed on the swing set.

He filled her cup with the milk, put the top on, and brought it over to sit next to her.

She grabbed the two handles on the sides and got it in her mouth perfectly.

Now she could. Before, it was anyone’s guess where the food and milk landed.

When snack time was done, Penelope’s feet hit the floor and she was off running for the stairs to her room. He felt comfortable enough having his room downstairs now, but for a solid year his daughter slept in the little sitting room off of his when it was just the two of them.

He watched his daughter climb the stairs holding the railing, one at a time. Slowly he’d stood behind her in case she slipped and started to fall backwards.

Penelope was off into her room to get her pajamas that he kept in the bottom drawer for her to pick out while he ran the water in the tub in the bathroom attached to her room.

Janelle stayed in the room on the other side of the Jack and Jill bathroom.

Penelope came into the bathroom, he undressed her and put her in the tub, she picked the sponge animal she wanted and their nighttime routine started.

Farm animal noises, body and hair washed, then dried off, jammies on with a pull-up.

His daughter was potty trained nice and early, but they had accidents at night and nap time so no reason to take chances.

Once Penelope was in bed with her favorite unicorn, bear, and lamb, he read her a story until her eyes shut, kissed her on the forehead, and shut the light.

“Love you, baby girl,” he whispered, then shut her door quietly, leaving it open a crack, and went downstairs.

“Is she asleep?” Janelle asked.

He found the nanny in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea.

He decided to get one too. They often shared a cup of herbal tea at night when Penelope was in bed.

“She is,” he said. “I should be home late tomorrow. Not sure the time yet.”

“No worries,” Janelle said. “It’s not like I’ve got far to go or even anyone to spend the time with.”

Janelle had been divorced for years and had one child who lived in Alaska and worked on some crabbing boat or something. Nothing he could imagine doing, but to each their own.

When Janelle retired from teaching because the budget cuts were making it too hard for her to give the kids what they needed, he’d scooped her up at just fifty-five years old and offered her not only double her teaching salary but also a free place to live.

She’d told him it was a dream come true.

He said he needed a firm commitment she’d be there to help raise his daughter and knew it came at a price. Her age made it the perfect mix of experience and youth in his eyes.

Because Janelle said it was more than she would have considered asking for, he knew right away, she was the one.

“Sorry about the holiday,” he said.

“Again,” Janelle said, “I’d be home alone anyway. This way, I can cook a turkey breast and all the fixings for Penelope and me. We can have a little Thanksgiving celebration and make paper hand turkeys while we watch you on TV.”

His daughter was getting a damn good education from Janelle in the process and he couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

Janelle was even the one who alerted him to some problems, and he still carried the guilt around for not seeing it himself.

“Will there be enough leftovers?” he asked.

“Always,” Janelle said. He did like that he didn’t have to do a ton of cooking. Janelle always made enough for leftovers when she was here at dinnertime.

“I guess I’ll take my tea and go read up on my notes to get ready for tomorrow,” he said.

“I’m going to watch some TV and then retire to bed,” Janelle said.

There was a loft with a TV on the second floor that Janelle used at night so she was close to Penelope. He had it stocked with food and drink so that his nanny didn’t have to come downstairs if she didn’t want to.

“Night,” he said.

He retired to his suite on the first floor and pulled up his laptop to get to work.

Before he did, he decided to check his email. He’d been ignoring his phone most of the day since he wanted to spend the time with his daughter before he left.

Didn’t mean he shut his phone off, but if the text or email didn’t need his immediate attention he let it go.

The email from Laken Carlisle caught his eye and he read it right away. She was asking if they could meet next week to get some things squared away. He already knew the plant that West had secured was getting set up and cleared for production to start. But they needed to hire some people to get that started and he was sure that was what Laken wanted to talk about.

He replied that he had a pretty open schedule Monday through Thursday and to let him know what worked for her.

Once that was sent, he went back to his other emails and shouldn’t have been shocked that Laken replied as quickly as she had.

He looked at the clock in the corner of his computer screen and saw that it was eight thirty. Funny that he was in his room sipping tea this early at night.

Just another thing his old teammates would be laughing at.

But him, he wouldn’t change a damn thing.