Jennifer was crying silently in the doorway. I looked at her and she mouthed, “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. “What do daddies and daughters do together?”
Lily’s whole face lit up despite the obvious pain she was in. “Can you read me a story? And then can we watch a movie? And then can you tell me I’m pretty and smart like daddies do?”
That’s when I started crying. Right there, sitting on that couch next to a six-year-old girl I’d known for five minutes.
Because what kind of world lets a child go through life without ever having someone read her a bedtime story or tell her she’s pretty and smart?
I spent the next eight hours being Lily’s daddy. I read her every book on her shelf—twice. We watched her favorite movie about a princess who saves herself.
I made her lunch, cutting her sandwich into triangles because she said that’s how daddies do it. I helped her draw pictures, and when she got tired, I carried her to the couch and let her fall asleep against my shoulder.
Jennifer told me the story while Lily slept. She’d gotten pregnant at nineteen. The father left the day she told him. She’d raised Lily alone, working two jobs, barely scraping by.
They’d had good years despite the struggles. And then six months ago, Lily started getting headaches. By the time they caught the tumor, it was inoperable. Too deep, too aggressive, growing too fast.
“I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell a dying six-year-old that some people are just selfish and cruel?”
When Lily woke up, she looked at me with those big eyes and asked, “Can you come back tomorrow?”
My heart broke all over again. “Yeah, baby girl. I can come back tomorrow.”
That was four months ago. The two months the doctors gave Lily came and went. I showed up every single day.
Sometimes we did big things—I’d carry her outside to sit on my parked motorcycle, let her pretend to drive. Sometimes we did small things—watched cartoons, colored pictures, played with her dolls.
And every single day, I told her she was the prettiest, smartest, bravest little girl in the whole world.
My club brothers thought I’d lost my mind at first. Then they met Lily. Soon it wasn’t just me visiting.
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