accepted pronunciation. “Show me your muscle, Daddy.”
In a grand show, he slapped a cocky look on his face, hitched the sleeve of his t-shirt up, and flexed.
Priscilla’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. Her chubby little hand stretched out to touch the mountainous terrain of his bicep.
“Can you pick up a car?” she breathed.
He laughed. “I don’t think so, but I can pick you up pretty easy.” And so he did, grabbing her to lie her flat in his arms before curling her up to his face to blow an unholy zerbert on her exposed belly. A riot of growling and giggling filled the shed.
“Do Mommy!” she squealed when he set her down.
With a sly look on his face, he stalked around the table toward me.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said, edging away from him.
Priscilla laughed like a hyena. “Get her!”
He darted for me, and I took off, but not fast enough. Before I knew it, he had me in a princess hold, now blowing his unholy zerberts on my neck, which was somehow both annoying and weirdly erotic.
Really, it was entirely inappropriate and in direct violation of our admittedly vague Priscilla rules.
I wished I cared. My primary instinct was to wrap myself around him like a boa constrictor, but somehow I mastered myself well enough that when he set me down, I didn’t launch myself back at him.
“You are disruptive,” I said, pointing at him just in case my face wasn’t authoritative enough.
He shrugged and pulled up a stool next to Priscilla. “What Cilla wants, Cilla gets.”
When they shared a conspiratory smile, I knew without question that they were wrapped around each other’s fingers.
I tried not to think about what that would mean come the end of the summer.
“All right, knuckleheads—we have work to do. What should we show him first, Cilla?”
“Clean the wax!”
“Okay. Bas, fill this pot with water, would you?” I nodded to the sink and passed him a stock pot.
“Done.” He stuck the pot under the filtered tap and turned it on.
Priscilla scrambled up the stool next to the stove where a stockpot of wax had already cooled, and I reached in, scooped out the slab of wax floating on top of the water, and set it on a stretch of wax paper on the counter.
“Trade you,” I said, and Sebastian took the one in my hands before bringing me the fresh pot.
He watched over my shoulder as I put the fresh pot in, fired up the burner, and dropped the wax in.
“How many times do you do that?” he asked.
“Three or four, until it’s clean. See the imperfections in there? When those are all gone, it’s ready to be used. Everything but the wax sinks, but it takes a few times to get it all.” I turned to Priscilla. “Okay, what’s next, bug?”
“Melting and smellies!”
“Yes! Show Daddy where the cellar is.”
“Okay,” she said as she climbed down and took Sebastian’s hand. “It’s here, Daddy. It smells icky but worms are there. We’re friends. I show you.”
“Worms, huh?”
“Yes. Fred and Sally and Barbara.” The energy it took her to get out the name Barbara amused both me and Sebastian. She pointed at the rope handle of the hatch in the floor. “Down there.”
He pulled it open and climbed down the ladder. His hands reappeared to grab Priscilla, and I heard them talking as she showed him several worms and directed him to the jars of shaved wax I’d pre-measured out.
I’d done a lot of imagining over the years about what this would be like—a family—and it almost wasn’t fair that he was this good, this perfect. It didn’t make the situation easier. It made it so much harder. Because I knew the odds of this lasting, and they weren’t good. I shouldn’t have been surprised at his natural skill—Sebastian had historically done everything right, with the exception of our impermanence. And I couldn’t even say that he’d done that wrong. Just not exactly to my liking.
I did my best not to dwell on the impermanence of this either. I told myself that knowing her father was good for Priscilla, even if he was leaving. We’d find a way to explain it to her. She wouldn’t understand, but we’d try. This had to be what people did when they parented but weren’t together. It had to be better for her to have some instability than to not know him.
But oh, how nice it would be to be a family like this always.
As we worked, we moved