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Sophia is asleep, and I’m creeping around like a fucking maniac because of a bad dream.
Dream or not, it felt fucking real.
A noise reaches my ears before the whimper. I blow out a breath and step into the room, flicking on the lamp on the dresser. The cot is against one wall, the changing table on the opposite. There’s a chair in the corner for feeding, a knitted blanket hanging over the back of it. The walls are a pale green, which matches most of the soft furnishings. When we decorated this room, we had no idea what our daughter would be like, but the space somehow fits Sophia.
Slowly, I walk over to the cot and peer in. My daughter is beautiful, with a crown of thick, dark hair and bright blue eyes. Her chubby cheeks are stained with tears, and I wonder how long she’s been fussing for.
Why didn’t Heidi hear her?
I glance over at the baby monitor on the side. The other sits on Heidi’s bedside table, but it should be on mine. Sophia is my responsibility, but I also meant it when I told Heidi I wouldn’t push her out. She loves my daughter—I see it in the fierce way she protects Sophia, even from me—and my daughter loves Heidi. I don’t want to take that relationship away from either of them, and if I’m being honest, I like having Heidi here. It’s easier to ignore the demons creeping around me when I have a distraction.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” My voice is soft as I lower the cot side.
Sophia tries to talk, but the babbling sounds she makes don’t resemble words, and eventually, she sucks on her fist.
Maybe I should wake Heidi, let her do this.
I shake myself. No, fuckhead. Just pick your daughter up and take care of her. Be a fucking father to her.
Sophia’s bottom lip sticks out as I lift her out of her cot, and she makes noises that are building to a cry.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I say to her, holding her against my chest like the precious thing she is.
As always, the darkness fades the moment she’s in my arms. My daughter soothes the monster in me and reminds me that I can be better.
She settles after a moment, grabbing a fistful of my beard. The pain has my eyes watering, and I gently try to unhook her little pincers. Grabbing my facial hair has become a game to her lately.
Distracting her by tickling her side, Sophia lets go of my face and cackles. It hits me in the gut how she can be so pure in a world like ours.
My hand moves over her bottom as I readjust her, and I can feel the fullness of her nappy. “Is that why you’re awake? Do you need to be changed?”
I glance at the door, expecting Heidi to appear and take over, but she doesn’t. I’ve seen her do this before, so I know the basics of how it works, but I’ve never changed Sophia by myself.
It can’t be that hard, right?
I walk over to the changing table and lay her down. Keeping one hand on her belly so she doesn’t roll off, I rummage through the drawers, finding a nappy and wipes.
My daughter sucks on her fist, her eyes watching me with interest. She might as well be scoring me out of ten.
“Don’t judge me,” I tell her. “Your dad’s pretty fuckin’ useless, but I’m gonna try, okay?”
She just stares up at me with those big soulful eyes, and I wonder if she sees the blood staining my soul. Does she know the crimes I’ve committed, the torture I’ve inflicted to avenge the mother she will never meet?
Fuck.
Unsettled by that thought, I focus instead on undoing her sleep suit, letting her presence bring me calm. One day, I’ll tell her everything about Mara and how much she was loved before she was born. I never want my daughter to forget her mother.
As I unzip the suit, I’m hit with the stench of shit. Fuck. Me. She must have dropped a radioactive nuke. I wrinkle my nose as I fumble to get her free of it, but as I unfurl the nappy, I realise how out of my depth I am. There’s a lot of shit.
Get it together, Trick. She’s just a baby.
I’ve killed men and bathed in blood from their wounds. This is nothing.
Grimacing and trying to breathe through my mouth, I use the unsoiled part of her nappy to wipe away the excess shit, just as I’ve seen Heidi do. Then I methodically clean every inch of my daughter. When I’m done, I dry her skin, and spotting some cream I’ve seen Heidi use before, I smear it where I think it should go.
She fights me as I lift her legs to slide a clean nappy under her. It takes some guesswork, but I get her into it and change her into a clean pair of tiny leggings and a little T-shirt. I don’t know if that’s what she’s meant to wear, but it’ll do.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
