Project: Daddy

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Once she was ready, she began dressing the children and realized that a four-year-old girl has more established fashion opinions than one might have expected. Her clothes had to match and her shoes had to be tied in precise double knots so they wouldn’t slip off. Then Elly had to supervise while Paris dressed Simon, who couldn’t have cared less how he looked as long as his precious book was firmly in his grasp.

By the time they were finished, Paris felt as though she needed to stop for a deep breath. She didn’t have time to put on makeup or blow-dry her hair as she usually did in an effort to tame the natural curl. Instead, she decided it would have to go wild and she shepherded her little charges to the kitchen where she fixed their breakfast. Glancing around, she saw no evidence that Mac had eaten before he’d left and was saddened by it. No matter what he said, Paris felt that she wasn’t earning her salary if he wasn’t being provided for, too. However, she wasn’t going to talk to him about it again. Instead, she would bake some kind of breakfast rolls and leave them where he could find them. Not that he would probably thank her for the effort, she thought grimly as she sat down at the table and began eating her own breakfast. He certainly seemed determined to accept nothing from her.

“Where’s Unka Mac?” Elly asked abruptly, looking up from a piece of pancake she’d been trying to spear with her fork.

“He’s gone to work,” Paris answered absently.

“Like a daddy?”

Focusing on the little girl’s interested face, Paris nodded. “That’s right.”

“That’s what daddies do,” Elly said with the air of an expert. “They go to work and the mom and the kids stay home.”

Paris grinned. “Have you been watching television shows from the fifties?”

“Huh?”

“Where did you hear this about daddies going to work and everyone else staying home?”

“From Sarah. She’s seven. She was my friend at my other house where I lived with my mommy. My mommy went to see elephants and when she gets back she’s going to take me and Simon to see them.”

Paris’s heart sank at the assurance in the little girl’s voice, but she could think of no words to answer her. She didn’t have to because Elly went on, “Sarah said that daddies go to work. That’s what Unka Mac does, but he’s not really a daddy.”

“Well, no, he’s not,” Paris admitted, wondering where this was leading.

“He could learn to be a daddy.” Elly bumped her feet against the chrome legs of the chair as she considered that. She nodded as if satisfied with her conclusion. “Because he knows how to read.”