“We picked you on purpose,” said the second girl, Rose, in the calm tone of somebody announcing test results.
“We checked everybody in the room,” said the third, Violet, clutching a little coin purse in both hands.
“Everybody,” said the fourth, Iris, who had a streak of chocolate on her wrist she either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care about.
Liam glanced around the ballroom automatically, looking for an adult heading toward them. A nanny. A mother. Somebody alarmed. Nobody was coming. The room kept moving like nothing unusual was happening.
He looked back at the girls.
“Picked me for what?” he asked.
Lily tilted her head and studied him with startling honesty.
“For pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
She answered without blinking.
“Pretending to be happy.”
That hit harder than it should have.
Adults spend years finding softer language for the things that hurt, and then a six-year-old says it straight and takes all the cover off. Liam opened his mouth, then shut it again. He didn’t have an answer that didn’t sound fake. Something in his face must have told Lily that, because she nodded like a theory had just been confirmed.
Then Violet stepped forward and placed the coin purse on the table between them.
“We’d like to hire you,” she said.
Liam stared at the purse. “To do what?”
“To be our father tonight,” Violet said.
He actually turned his head like there had to be a hidden camera somewhere. No one was laughing. No one was watching them. Rose carefully opened the purse and tipped the contents onto the tablecloth.
Five one-dollar bills. Three quarters. And a yellow button with a little anchor on it.
“We don’t know how much fathers cost,” Iris said. “We’ve never had one at a party before.”
Liam picked up the yellow button.
It looked familiar because it was. It had come off his work jacket the week before. He kept spare buttons sewn into the inside hem, and one must have dropped off while he was working in the ballroom.
The girls watched him like the whole night hinged on whether he understood how serious they were.
“What exactly would I have to do?” he asked.
Lily smiled.
“Just sit with us,” she said. “And if anyone asks, you’re ours.”
There are moments when something is so sad and so strange at the same time that laughter isn’t even available. Liam looked at the money. The quarters. The yellow anchor button. He thought about Theo asleep at home with the neighbor who watched him on evening shifts. He thought about how long these girls had to have studied the room before deciding that out of every polished man in the place, the maintenance guy with the cold tea was the one least likely to lie to them.
“Your father’s not here?” Liam asked gently.
Lily gave the smallest shrug.
“He left.”
“When we were two,” Rose added. “He said four was too many.”
Liam had to look away for a second.
Four was too many.
The sentence landed in the same deep place certain grief words always land. He thought about the first night Rachel never came home from the hospital. Theo asleep against his chest. Casseroles from neighbors. Paperwork spread across the kitchen table. His brother-in-law saying quietly he didn’t know how Liam was going to do this. Not because Theo was unwanted. Never that. But because people often call something impossible when what they really mean is inconvenient.
Four was too many.
To Liam, children had never been numbers.
“I have a son,” he said.
All four girls leaned in a little.
“His name is Theo. He’s five.”
“What’s he like?” Violet asked.
Liam smiled, almost without meaning to. “Like a tornado that says sorry afterward.”
Rose laughed before she could stop herself, then covered her mouth like that had been improper.
Liam pushed the money back toward them.
“Keep it,” he said.
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